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BV  633  .B87  1923 
Butterfield,  Kenyon  L.  1868 

19  3  5. 

A  Christian  program  for  the 
rural _ cpmtnunitY - 


V 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/christianprogramOObutt 


0 


THE  FONDREN  LECTURES  FOR  1923 

Delivered  Before  the  SCHOOL  OF  THEOLOGY 
of  SOUTHERN  METHODIST  UNIVERSITY 


A  CHRISTIAN  PROGRAM 
FOR  THE  RURAL  COMMUNITY 

BY 

KENYON  L.  BUTTERFIELD 


The  Fondren  Lectures 


Mr.  and  Mrs.  IV.  W.  Fondren ,  members  of  St.  Paul’s 
Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  South,  Houston,  Texas, 
gave  to  Southern  Methodist  University  on  May  10,  IQIO, 
a  fund,  the  proceeds  from  which  were  to  be  used  in  the 
establishment  of  the  Fondren  Lectures  on  Christian  Mis¬ 
sions.  The  following  paragraph  from  the  conditions  of 
the  original  gift  will  set  forth  the  spirit  and  purpose  of 
the  Foundation: 

“ The  interest  on  the  investment  shall  be  used  annually 
in  procuring  some  competent  person  to  deliver  lectures  on 
Christian  Missions  under  the  auspices  of  Southern  Metho¬ 
dist  University.  This  fund  is  dedicated  to  the  foundation 
of  a  lectureship  on  Christian  Missions  in  consideration  of 
other  donations  made  for  the  upbuilding  of  Southern 
Methodist  University,  and  especially  the  School  of  The¬ 
ology  thereof,  and  in  the  hope  that  something  of  good  may 
come  directly  therefrom  and  that  others  more  able  to  give 
largely  may  be  inspired  to  devote  some  portion  of  the 
means  which  they  hold  in  trust  as  stewards  of  the  Lord 
to  the  increase  of  said  fund  or  to  some  other  laudable 
enterprise  of  our  Church V 


1 


A  CHRISTIAN  PROGRAM 

FOR  THE 

RURAL  COMMUNITY 


/&W  0F 

KENYON  L.  BUTTERFIELD  t;'lAR  IS  1924 
A.M.,  LL.D. 

PRESIDENT,  MASSACHUSETTS  AGRICULTURAL  COLLEGE 


tern 


Ay 

v'V  / 


Lamar  &  Barton,  Agents 
Publishing  House  M.E.  Church,  South 

Nashville,  Tenn. 

1923 


COPYRIGHT,  1923, 

BY  LAMAR  &  BARTON,  AGENTS 


A  CHRISTIAN  PROGRAM  FOR  THE  RURAL  COMMUNITY.  II 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


CONTENTS 


Chapter  One: 

THE  NEED  OF  A  CHRISTIAN  PROGRAM  . 

Chapter  Two: 

THE  PRINCIPLES  INVOLVED 

Chapter  Three: 

SOME  APPLICATIONS  TO  RURAL  AFFAIRS  . 

Chapter  Four: 

THE  ORGANS  OF  CHRISTIAN  RURAL  PROG¬ 
RESS  ....... 

Chapter  Five: 

CHRISTIANIZING  THE  RURAL  COMMUNITY 


PAGE 

9 

4i 

85 

127 


163 


Chapter  One 


THE  NEED  OF  A  CHRISTIAN  PROGRAM 


Chapter  One 

THE  NEED  OF  A  CHRISTIAN 
PROGRAM 

Are  We  Half  Pagan  f 

The  American  people  in  the  past  have  habit¬ 
ually  assumed  that  they  were  a  Christian  na¬ 
tion.  We  have  sent  missionaries  to  convert 
the  heathen.  We  have  even  suspected  that 
some  European  nations  were  only  in  part 
Christian,  and  when  the  great  war  broke  out 
we  were  sure  of  it.  But  we  are  now  in  a 
chastened  mood ;  there  are  those  among  us  who 
even  assert  that  our  civilization  is  half  pagan. 
Returned  missionaries  tell  us  that  Oriental 
countries  are  becoming  doubtful  if  we  are  a 
Christian  country,  and  are  asking  in  what  re¬ 
spects,  even  if  we  are  Christian,  we  have  the 
advantage  over  them.  Not  long  ago  a  group 
of  Christian  business  men  from  Tokyo  came 
to  the  United  States  for  the  purpose  of  dis¬ 
covering  how  the  practices  of  Christian  mer¬ 
chants  differ  from  the  practices  of  non-Chris- 

9 


10  A  Christian  Program 

tian  merchants.  A  press  report  states  that 
they  have  not  yet  found  the  difference! 

For  a  quarter  of  a  century  books  have  been 
appearing  in  increasing  numbers  concerning 
the  need  of  applying  Christian  principles  to  our 
social  problems,  and  recently  these  books  have 
multiplied  many  fold.  The  very  foundations 
of  our  social  structure  are  being  challenged. 
Walter  Rauschenbusch  a  decade  ago  said,  “It 
is  unjust  to  Christianity  to  call  our  civilization 
Christian;  it  is  unjust  to  our  civilization  to  call 
it  unchristian.  It  is  semi-Christian.”  Profes¬ 
sor  Ellwood  in  his  book  on  “The  Reconstruc¬ 
tion  of  Religion”  has  a  chapter  on  “Our  Semi¬ 
pagan  Civilization,”  in  which  he  says  that  one 
of  the  important  needs  of  the  time  is  “the  per¬ 
ception  of  the  essential  paganism  and  barbarity 
of  our  present  civilization.”  And  again :  “The 
trend  in  Western  civilization  as  a  whole  for 
several  years  immediately  prior  to  the  break¬ 
ing  out  of  the  great  war  was  unquestionably 
away  from  Christian  ideals.”  And  then  this 
challenge:  “Now  this  recrudescence  of  barba¬ 
rism  shows  conclusively  enough  that  our  civili¬ 
zation  can  no  longer  remain  half  pagan  and 
half  Christian.  It  must  soon  become  one  or 


The  Need  of  a  Christian  Program  11 

the  other.  We  have  come  to  the  parting  of 
the  ways.  Unless  the  world  becomes  speedily 
Christian,  it  is  bound  to  become  speedily 
pagan.” 

These  are  ominous  words.  But  they  are  no 
stronger  than  those  used  by  one  of  the  able 
editors  of  the  time,  Mr.  Glenn  Frank  of  the 
Century  Magazine ,  who,  partly  in  comment  on 
Mr.  Ellwood’s  book,  said: 

The  civilization  that  preceded  and  precipi¬ 
tated  the  war  was  at  best  a  thinly  veneered 
barbarism  that  was  slowly  consuming  the  life 
of  the  race  in  the  poverties  of  peace  no  less 
than  in  the  perils  of  war.  Pagan  ideals  of 
power  and  pleasure  had  spread  their  nets  anew 
for  the  capture  of  our  souls.  Power  was  the 
goal  of  the  state ;  pleasure  was  the  goal  of  the 
people.  Political  life  had  become  paganized  by 
its  passion  for  power  at  any  price;  business 
life  had  become  paganized  by  its  scramble  for 
profits  at  any  price;  and  social  life  had  become 
paganized  by  its  devotion  to  pleasure  at  any 
price.  In  this  reluctant  indictment  little,  if  any, 
discrimination  can  be  made  between  allied,  en¬ 
emy,  and  neutral  peoples.  We  were  all  guilty 
of  the  sin  of  surrender  to  pagan  ideals.  We 
practiced  paganism  while  we  professed  Chris¬ 
tianity.  All  of  Western  civilization  was  thus 
a  sort  of  corporate  hypocrisy. 


12  A  Christian  Program 

And  Dr.  Daniel  Evans  of  Andover  Theo¬ 
logical  Seminary  has  recently  stated  the  issue 
in  these  weighty  words:  “It  is  quite  plain  to 
all  that  paganism  is  once  more  in  power  in 
the  lives  of  many  persons  in  all  lands.  The 
deadliest  conflict  our  religion  now  faces  is  with 
this  fiercest  foe  of  all  it  holds  dear.  The  essen¬ 
tial  principles  of  both  are  opposed/’ 

The  same  sort  of  indictment  of  Western 
civilization  is  abroad  in  England.  A  writer 
in  the  Manchester  Guardian ,  under  the  title 
“The  Threat  to  Civilization”  says,  “We  are 
forced  to  recognize  a  deep-seated  disharmony 
in  our  civilization,  something  wrong  with  the 
nations  which  comes  out  in  their  dealings  with 
one  another”;  and  then,  referring  to  a  state¬ 
ment  of  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  to  the  effect  that 
modern  civilized  society  has  visibly  broken 
down,  says,  “This  moral  breakup  is  the  cause 
of  the  desolation  which  Mr.  Wells  sees  advanc¬ 
ing.”  And  Bishop  William  Temple  quotes, 
from  a  report  of  the  Archbishop’s  Committee 
on  Christianity  and  Industrial  Problems,  to  the 
effect  that  our  present  “industrial  society”  is 
fundamentally  and  gravely  defective  and  that 
“the  solution  of  the  industrial  problem  involves, 


The  Need  of  a  Christian  Program  13 

in  short,  not  merely  the  improvement  of  indi¬ 
viduals  but  a  fundamental  change  in  the  spirit 
of  industrial  civilization  itself.^  Professor 
Tawney,  the  English  economist,  says  in  no  un¬ 
certain  terms  that  we  cannot  get  ahead  so  long 
as  acquisition  is  the  main  motive  of  the  human 
race,  and  that  the  only  remedy  is  to  turn  “an 
acquisitive  society”  into  a  society  motivated  by 
the  spirit  of  service  to  humanity. 

These  men  are  not  “Socialists”  nor  “Reds,” 
nor  “Bolshevists”;  but  all  of  them  are  sober- 
minded,  responsible  for  what  they  say,  and 
some  of  them  are  influential  leaders  of  the 
Church.  It  is  clear,  however,  that  they  are 
prophets  of  a  new  social  order ;  and  they  agree 
substantially  that  we  have  only  half  succeeded 
in  making  our  civilization  Christian ;  or  to  re¬ 
verse  the  thought,  that  we  are  still  half  pagan. 

The  Demand  for  a  Christian  Program  for  Society 

When  we  seek  an  answer  to  the  question, 
“What  are  we  going  to  do  about  it?”  “How 
can  we  get  rid  of  this  half-pagan  civilization?” 
what  is  perhaps  the  expected  answer,  but  after 
all  the  very  significant  answer,  is  that  we  must 
make  it  wholly  Christian.  And  even  more 


14  A  Christian  Program 

striking  is  the  fact  that  by  no  means  all  of 
the  emphasis  upon  religion  as  the  cure  for  our 
present  ills  comes  from  the  leaders  of  the 
Church.  Practically  all  of  the  constructive 
suggestions  for  meeting  our  present  difficulties 
emphasize  the  idea  that  we  must  change  the 
spirit  and  attitude  of  great  masses  of  men,  and 
when  definitions  are  attempted,  the  terms  of 
reform  are  always  items  in  a  Christian  pro¬ 
gram.  I  think  we  may  fairly  say  that  we  are 
seeing  a  gathering  tide  of  powerful  influences 
asserting  that  we  must  have  a  Christian  pro¬ 
gram  for  society,  that  it  is  the  only  way  out 
of  our  troubles,  and  that  our  task  is  to  define 
the  program  clearly,  illustrate  satisfactorily 
its  applications,  and  then  proceed  to  carry  it 
out. 

Mr.  Frank,  in  the  article  already  quoted, 
after  referring  to  Professor  Santayana's  dole¬ 
ful  prophecy  that  civilization  is  perhaps  enter¬ 
ing  one  of  those  long  winters  that  overtake  it 
from  time  to  time,  says  that  “nothing  can  pre¬ 
vent  Western  civilization  from  entering  the 
long  winter  of  Mr.  Santayana's  prophecy  ex¬ 
cept  a  vast  spiritual  renaissance,  a  vast  process 
of  moral  renewal  sweeping  through  the  world 


The  Need  of  a  Christian  Program  15 

like  another  Reformation.  Only  it  must  be  a 
more  fundamental  reformation.  Personally,  I 
believe  that  we  are  in  the  morning  hours  of 
such  a  renaissance.” 

An  editorial  in  the  New  York  Times  last 
July  said,  under  the  title  “Indestructible  Re¬ 
ligion”  :  “Nothing  is  so  much  needed  to-day  in 
the  rehabilitation  of  the  broken  world  as  a 
faith  that  still  holds  toward  a  higher,  diviner 
goal  than  mere  social  and  economic  and  politi¬ 
cal  adjustment — than  things  that  are  purely 
physical  and  temporal.” 

A  report  of  a  conference  of  employers, 
chiefly  members  of  the  Society  of  Friends,  held 
in  England  three  or  four  years  ago,  outlined 
a  very  complete  and  striking  program  on  “The 
Way  in  Which  Our  Religious  Faith  Can  Be 
Given  Fuller  Expression  in  Business  Life.” 
There  is  no  doubt  but  in  America  there  are 
hundreds  of  high-minded  business  men  fairly 
and  earnestly,  individually  and  in  groups,  striv¬ 
ing  to  work  out  on  some  practical,  effective 
basis  this  same  thought  of  reconciling  religion 
and  business,  of  making  industries  and  society 
truly  Christian.  Although  of  course  disclaim¬ 
ing  the  Christian  label,  there  has  recently  been 


16  A  Christian  Program 

issued  an  “Ethical  Program  for  Business 
Men/'  indorsed  by  the  Business  Men’s  Club 
of  the  New  York  Society  for  Ethical  Culture. 
This  report  says:  “We  affirm  that  the  evils 
which  are  inherent  in  the  present  economic 
system,  and  which  are  more  and  more  eclipsing 
its  incidental  advantages,  are  all  traceable  to 
a  false  motive  as  their  ultimate  root.”  And 
the  false  motive  is  that  of  rendering  social 
service  for  “the  sake  of  the  pecuniary  gain  to 
be  derived  from  it”;  whereas  “the  motive  must 
be  service  for  the  sake  of  service.”  The  report 
speaks  of  “prostitution  of  service  to  money 
gain”  as  “the  blight  on  the  business  world  to¬ 
day.” 

In  the  debate  last  December  in  the  United 
States  Senate  on  the  proposal  of  Senator  Borah 
for  an  international  conference,  Senator  Wil¬ 
liams  of  Mississippi  made  a  speech  which  was 
nothing  more  or  less  than  a  sermon  on  the  need 
of  applying  Christianity  to  international  af¬ 
fairs,  and  in  his  speech  is  found  this  striking 
paragraph : 

Do  you  know  what  real  progressivism  means  ? 
It  means  taking  steps  forward  toward  the 
concept  of  God  and  trying  to  idealize  our 


The  Need  of  a  Christian  Program  17 

ordinary  relations  toward  a  common  goal, 
which  is  His  will,  and  His  will  is  for  peace  on 
earth  amongst  men.  That  is  what  real  pro- 
gressivism  means;  but  I  doubt  not  that  to  a 
lot  of  you  it  looks  like  conservatism  and  reac¬ 
tion  of  the  most  ultimate  character — going 
back  to  God,  which  is  rather,  I  imagine,  a  re¬ 
actionary  movement. 

It  is  both  encouraging  and  significant  to  dis¬ 
cover  the  extent  to  which  church  bodies  and 
various  other  groups  of  Christians  are  endeav¬ 
oring  to  work  out  practicable  Christian  pro¬ 
grams  for  the  rehabilitation  of  industry,  busi¬ 
ness,  and  international  affairs.  Let  me  in  a 
very  brief  way  call  attention  to  a  number  of 
these  expressions. 

The  “Social  Creed  of  the  Churches,”  first 
adopted  in  1912,  ratified  in  1916,  added  to  in 
1919,  has  been  promulgated  by  the  Federal 
Council  of  Churches  and  indorsed  by  many 
other  bodies.  It  is  a  specific  program  of  some 
twenty  points,  and  is  an  avowed  effort  to  apply 
Christian  principles  to  the  acquisition  and  use 
of  property  and  the  equitable  division  of  the 
product  of  industry. 

Equally  strong  ground  has  been  taken  by 
the  American  Catholic  church  through  what 


18  A  Christian  Program 

is  known  as  “The  Bishops’  Program.”  In  fact 
this  program  is  distinctly  a  charter  of  freedom 
for  the  workingman.  “What  it  aims  to  do 
is  to  bring  more  justice  and  charity  into  in¬ 
dustrial  life,  and  help  to  build  economic  insti¬ 
tutions  that  will  take  more  into  consideration 
the  sacred  rights  and  the  no  less  sacred  duties 
of  human  beings.” 

There  has  been  organized  a  “Fellowship  for 
a  Christian  Social  Order”  whose  main  purpose 
is  stated  in  the  following  remarkable  pream¬ 
ble: 

We  believe  that,  according  to  the  life  and 
teaching  of  Jesus,  the  supreme  task  of  mankind 
is  the  creation  of  a  social  order,  the  Kingdom 
of  God  on  earth,  wherein  the  maximum  oppor¬ 
tunity  shall  be  afforded  for  the  development 
and  enrichment  of  every  human  personality; 
in  which  the  supreme  motive  shall  be  love; 
wherein  men  shall  cooperate  in  service  for  the 
common  good  and  brotherhood  shall  be  a  real¬ 
ity  in  all  of  the  daily  relationships  of  life. 

Plans  are  under  way  for  a  “National  Con¬ 
ference  on  the  Christian  Way  of  Life  in  In¬ 
dustrial,  Racial,  and  International  Relations.” 
The  purpose  is  to  make  a  serious  study  of 


The  Need  of  a  Christian  Program  19 

these  problems  “in  the  light  of  the  spirit  and 
teaching  of  Jesus.” 

In  1921  there  was  held  in  England  the  first 
“Universal  Christian  Conference  of  the 
Church  of  Christ  on  Life  and  Work” ;  a  second 
meeting  was  held  in  Sweden  in  1922;  and  it 
is  proposed  to  have  a  conference  in  America 
in  the  near  future.  The  purpose  is  “to  con¬ 
centrate  the  thought  of  Christendom  on  the 
mind  of  Christ  as  revealed  in  the  Gospels  to¬ 
ward  those  great  social  questions,  industrial 
and  international,  which  are  so  acutely  urgent 
in  every  country.” 

An  exceedingly  strong  report,  indeed  I  think 
one  of  the  most  significant  volumes  of  our  time, 
was  prepared  by  the  Committee  on  the  War 
and  Religious  Outlook  and  published  under 
the  title  “The  Church  and  Industrial  Recon¬ 
struction.”  There  is  a  thorough  analysis  of 
the  problem  in  terms  of  such  topics  as  “The 
Christian  Ideal  for  Society,”  “Unchristian  As¬ 
pects  of  the  Present  Industrial  Order,”  “The 
Christian  Attitude  Toward  the  System  As  a 
Whole,”  “The  Christian  Method  of  Social  Bet¬ 
terment,”  “Present  Practicable  Steps  Toward 
a  More  Christian  Industrial  Order,”  “The 


20  A  Christian  Program 

Question  of  the  Longer  Future,”  “What  In¬ 
dividual  Christians  Can  Do  to  Christianize  the 
Industrial  Order,”  and  “What  the  Church  Can 
Do  to  Christianize  the  Industrial  Order.” 

Perhaps  no  Church  has  taken  stronger 
ground  in  this  attempt  to  reshape  American 
work  and  life  on  Christian  principles  than  the 
Methodist  Church,  North.  Through  its  Fed¬ 
eration  for  Social  Service,  its  social  service 
bulletin,  its  cooperation  with  the  Federal  Coun¬ 
cil  of  Churches,  and  finally  in  its  “address  of 
the  Board  of  Bishops,”  it  has  taken  an  ad¬ 
vanced  stand.  The  latter  document  recently 
issued  says:  “It  is  our  solemn  judgment  that 
nothing  short  of  the  actual  application  of  the 
principles  of  Jesus  in  governmental,  economic, 
religious,  educational,  and  racial  life  to-day 
will  meet  the  need.  The  whole  world  stands 
appalled  at  the  colossal  failure  of  other  pro¬ 
grams.  Let  us  now  frankly  and  honestly  prac¬ 
tice  the  principles  of  Christ.”  And  Bishop 
Francis  J.  McConnell  added  to  this  report  these 
bold  and  pregnant  words:  “We  are  convinced 
that  there  is  no  healing  for  the  world’s  woe 
unless  we  are  willing  to  face  concrete  social 
faults  as  they  are,  and  to  approach  the  cure 


The  Need  of  a  Christian  Program  21 

of  those  faults  not  in  a  spirit  of  condescension 
but  of  humility  and  contrition  for  our  share  in 
them.” 

Perhaps  it  was  not  necessary  in  this  in¬ 
stance  to  give  so  much  time  and  space  to  these 
quotations,  but  I  think  they  comprise  a  for¬ 
midable  array  of  cumulative  evidence  of  a 
determined,  organized,  and  sincere  effort  to 
provide  a  Christian  program  for  the  world. 
They  are  an  attempt  to  meet  the  criticism  of 
our  present  society  which  was  voiced  by  a 
Christian  preacher  in  the  far  East  who  has 
said  that  our  failure  to  make  society  Christian 
is  threefold,  “that  we  have  not  thought  out 
the  application  of  our  faith,  and  what  we  have 
seen  we  have  not  dared  to  follow,  and  what 
we  have  not  dared  to  apply  we  still  profess  to 
have  accepted.” 

So  on  every  hand,  as  the  present  puzzling 
problems  of  to-day  are  under  discussion,  men 
are  saying  that  religion  is  the  only  cure, 
whether  it  be  the  matter  of  respect  for  law, 
the  proper  relation  between  employer  and  em¬ 
ployee,  the  care  of  the  weaker  folk  in  society, 
political  reform,  the  breaking  down  of  racial 
prejudice,  the  development  of  the  international 


22  A  Christian  Program 

spirit — the  one  adequate  cure  for  our  social  ills, 
it  is  coming  to  be  universally  regarded,  will 
be  found  in  the  motives,  the  spirit,  the  attitude, 
the  teaching  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 

Agriculture  Omitted  front  the  Programs 

It  is  a  curious  fact,  however,  that  in  all  this 
welter  of  discussion,  among  these  many  books, 
in  the  lines  of  these  multitudes  of  periodical 
writings,  in  all  the  platform  speeches,  in  the 
programs  for  reform,  there  is  little  or  no  ref¬ 
erence  to  the  problems  of  the  rural  people.  Is 
it  because  there  are  no  problems?  Or  is  it 
because  our  rural  civilization  is  more  Christian 
than  our  urban  civilization?  Or  is  it  taken 
for  granted  that  what  applies  to  our  urban 
society  also  applies  to  our  agricultural  society  ? 
Or  is  it  because  these  new  prophets  do  not  know 
the  rural  question  ?  Surely  it  cannot  be  because 
of  lack  of  rural  people.  One-third  of  the 
workers  of  the  United  States  are  farmers  and 
one-half  of  our  people  live  under  essentially 
rural  conditions.  Even  great  industrial  coun¬ 
tries,  like  Germany  and  Belgium  and  England, 
have  substantial  portions  of  their  population 


The  Need  of  a  Christian  Program  23 

living  on  the  land.  France  is  half  rural,  Italy 
is  three-fourths  rural,  the  Balkans  are  almost 
completely  rural.  When  we  pass  to  the  huge 
populations  of  Russia  and  India  and  China,  we 
find  that  four  persons  out  of  five  live  on  the 
land  and  make  their  living  directly  from  the 
land.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  two-thirds  and 
probably  three-fourths  of  the  world’s  popula¬ 
tion  are  engaged  in  agricultural  or  at  least 
rural  occupations,  are  living  under  non-urban 
conditions,  and  have  the  rural  point  of  view. 
There  are  not  less  than  one  billion  rural  folk 
in  the  world. 

Whatever  the  reasons  may  be,  the  fact  that 
these  Christian  programs  entirely  omit  the 
farmer  is  notable  and  serious ;  notable  because 
of  the  significance  of  the  farming  population, 
serious  because  of  the  partial  nature  of  any 
program  that  leaves  them  out  of  account.  The 
periodicals  essentially  agricultural  or  those  that 
are  widely  read  by  farmers  do  not  for  the 
most  part  avow  a  Christian  point  of  view.  Im¬ 
portant  committees  or  conferences  on  indus¬ 
trial  relations,  on  international  cooperation,  on 
social  reform,  usually  have  small  or  no  repre- 


24  A  Christian  Program 

sentation  of  farmers.  Great  apostles  of  the 
newer  gospel,  such  as  Maude  Royden,  are  not 
heard  by  the  country  people. 

This  unfortunate  omission  of  rural  interests 
is  well  illustrated  in  the  case  of  peace  propa¬ 
ganda.  No  population  group  is  more  peace- 
loving  than  the  farmers;  none  suffers  more 
from  the  ravages  of  war;  none  could  be  more 
easily  mobilized  for  deeds  of  justice  between 
nations,  for  none  has  a  keener  sense  of  justice. 
There  is,  however,  no  effort,  so  far  as  I  can 
discover,  either  to  reach  the  farming  classes 
of  the  world  with  the  messages  of  peace,  nor 
to  seek  their  support  for  the  methods  that  may 
bring  peace. 

Significance  of  the  Rural  Group 

Allusion  has  already  been  made  to  the  fact 
that  the  major  part  of  the  world's  population 
is  made  up  of  tillers  of  the  soil.  It  is  these 
men  and  women  that  must  furnish  the  world’s 
food  supply.  They  meet  the  primary  wants 
of  man.  There  can  be  no  city,  no  industry, 
no  civilization,  except  as  their  hands  and  their 
skill  and  their  sweat  wring  food  from  Mother 
Earth.  There  is  no  substitute  thus  far  that 


The  Need  of  a  Christian  Program  25 

science,  or  invention,  or  business  organization, 
or  legislation  has  found  for  this  elemental, 
vital  contribution  of  the  farmers  to  society. 

The  world  of  men  has  always  been  attracted 
by  the  glitter  of  gold,  and  even  to-day  we  relish 
revelations  of  new  material  wealth  that  can 
be  put  to  the  use  of  man — gold  and  silver  and 
precious  stones  and  iron  and  coal  and  oil.  But 
each  of  them  and  all  of  them  thrown  together 
are  worth  but  a  fraction  of  the  value  of  the 
greatest  natural  resource  of  all,  the  soil.  And 
the  maintenance  of  the  fertility  of  the  soil  is 
in  the  hands  of  the  farmer.  We  may  legislate 
to  conserve  water  power;  we  may  attempt  to 
control  the  output  of  oil,  but  the  only  way  by 
which  society  can  guarantee  food  to  future 
generations  is  to  guarantee  that  the  millions 
and  hundreds  of  millions  of  farmers  shall  have 
the  skill  and  purpose  to  conserve  soil  fertility. 

Farming,  moreover,  is  still  the  largest  single 
industry  in  the  world.  Indeed,  it  is  still  the 
largest  single  industry  in  the  United  States,  if 
we  consider  only  those  values  that  are  added 
to  products  directly  by  the  industry  itself.  The 
agricultural  industry  does  not  have  the  spec¬ 
tacular  features  of  the  huge  manufacturing 


26  A  Christian  Program 

plants.  We  have  in  agriculture  no  body  of 
75,000  employees  under  the  control  of  one 
man.  Nevertheless,  on  their  scattered  farms, 
in  their  quiet  way,  as  they  meet  the  spring 
sowing  and  the  autumn  harvest,  the  farmers 
of  the  world  are  the  managers  and  the  laborers 
in  the  largest  industry  of  mankind.  And  their 
contribution  is  not  merely  to  the  food  supply. 
They  furnish  also  the  larger  fraction  of  raw 
materials  for  the  various  forms  of  manufac¬ 
turing;  the  transportation  of  products  to  and 
from  the  farm  is  one  of  the  great  items  in  the 
service  of  all  types  of  communication;  a  large 
share  of  the  freight  carried  across  the  seas  is 
directly  or  indirectly  the  product  of  the  farm¬ 
ers. 

Perhaps,  man  for  man,  the  farmers  are  not 
as  heavy  buyers  as  are  wage  earners — they  are 
more  nearly  self-sustaining.  Nevertheless  be¬ 
cause  of  their  huge  numbers  and  by  reason  of 
rapidly  increasing  demands  for  machinery  and 
other  implements  used  in  their  business,  as 
well  as  to  supply  the  household  needs  which 
are  common  to  them  as  to  others,  the  farmers 
of  the  world  constitute  an  immense  consuming 
class,  and  their  consumption  power  reacts  im- 


The  Need  of  a  Christian  Program  27 

mediately  upon  manufacturing,  transportation, 
commerce,  finance.  It  has  been  said  that  if 
you  could  make  it  possible  for  each  Chinese 
farmer  to  buy  one  more  cotton  suit  a  year  than 
he  now  uses  you  would  revolutionize  the  busi¬ 
ness  of  cotton  goods  manufacture. 

The  great  fundamental  quest  of  the  twenti¬ 
eth  century  is  the  attempt  to  secure  more  de¬ 
mocracy.  Without  entering  upon  any  discus¬ 
sion  of  this  profound  term,  we  may  safely  as¬ 
sert  that  as  democracy  develops,  masses  of  men 
exercise  more  and  more  influence.  For  gen¬ 
erations  to  come,  therefore,  the  farmers  of  the 
various  countries  and  the  farmers  of  the  world 
as  a  whole  are  sure  to  play  an  increasingly  im¬ 
portant  part  in  determining  industrial,  political, 
social,  and  international  policies.  I  should  like 
to  discuss  this  matter  more  at  length  if  time 
permitted  because  I  regard  this  argument  as 
one  of  the  most  important  of  all  in  making  sure 
that  our  rural  civilization  is  adequate  to  meet 
the  demands  of  the  age. 

Without  putting  one’s  self  under  the  charge 
of  being  sentimental  and  of  idealizing  the  farm¬ 
ers,  I  think  it  may  also  be  safely  said  that 
on  the  whole  the  morals  and  ideals  of  rural 


28  A  Christian  Program 

people  form  a  real  contribution  to  the  world’s 
good.  I  believe  sincerely  that  there  are  quali¬ 
ties  of  mind  and  heart  engendered  by  the  rural 
mode  of  life  that  do  to  some  extent  prevail  in 
national  life  but  that  should,  to  a  far  greater 
degree,  be  made  effective  in  the  common  moral 
issues  of  mankind. 

And  so  for  all  these  reasons  we  may  not  with 
safety  omit  the  rural  people  and  rural  interests 
in  the  making  of  a  Christian  program  for  our 
world. 

The  “Rising  Tide”  of  Agrarianism 

Quite  apart  from  these  general  considera¬ 
tions  that  may  be  argued  as  reasons  for  in¬ 
cluding  farmers  in  the  task  of  making  the 
world  Christian,  is  the  fact  that  we  are  wit¬ 
nessing  what  is  undoubtedly  the  most  formida¬ 
ble  agrarian  movement  in  all  history.  In  the 
Atlantic  Monthly  for  November,  1922,  Mr. 
Louis  Levine  in  a  significant  article  on  “Com¬ 
munists  and  Ploughshares,”  states  that  “the 
reconstruction  of  Russia  depends  basically 
upon  the  reconstruction  of  her  agricultural  in¬ 
dustry  and  of  the  economic  and  social  relation¬ 
ships  in  which  this  industry  is  to  be  carried 


The  Need  of  a  Christian  Program  29 

on/’  Prince  Lvov,  the  long-time  President  of 
the  Russian  Zemstvos,  which  have  been  called 
“The  Farm  Bureaus  of  Russia/’  recently  said 
in  an  article  in  Our  World,  “The  people  of 
the  soil  were  always  the  creative  force  and 
defense  of  the  empire.”  And  Dr.  Guest  in 
“The  Struggle  for  Power  in  Europe”  says, 
“All  over  Europe  .  .  .  future  politics  depend 
upon  an  agreement  (or  a  fight  in  lieu  of  an 
agreement)  between  town  and  country.”  And 
Mr.  H.  L.  Brailsford,  the  English  publicist, 
has  repeatedly,  since  the  close  of  the  war,  called 
attention  to  the  almost  certain  dominance  of 
the  peasants  in  the  affairs  of  nearly  all  the 
European  countries  during  the  next  few  years. 
Hilaire  Belloc  believes  that  the  quarrel  between 
the  proletariat  and  the  capitalist  is,  in  Europe 
at  least,  a  most  serious  menace,  and  he  says 
that  “if  our  civilization  were  mainly  indus¬ 
trial,”  then  this  peril  might  be  vital.  He  says, 
however,  that  “happily  for  us  the  most  of  our 
European  civilization  is  a  peasant  civilization, 
and  one  of  the  most  remarkable  of  the  changes 
of  the  quite  recent  times  is  the  resurrection  of 
the  peasant  in  Europe,  that  is,  the  men  working 
on  the  land  and  having  their  full  proprietor- 


30  A  Christian  Program 

ship  in  the  land.”  And  Signor  Mussolini,  the 

♦ 

new  leader  of  Italy,  said  not  long  ago  in  an 
interview  that  his  government  would  “devote 
all  its  efforts  to  the  creation  of  an  agrarian 
democracy  based  on  the  principle  of  small 
ownership/’ 

But  we  do  not  have  to  go  to  Europe  to  dis¬ 
cover  a  full-blown  agrarian  movement.  Our 
neighbors  in  Canada  have  witnessed  not  only 
in  provincial  elections,  but  in  their  federal 
elections,  a  distinct  effort  on  the  part  of  the 
farmers  to  gain  power  in  politics.  Up  to  this 
time  the  farmers  have  in  a  large  measure  suc¬ 
ceeded.  In  our  own  country  the  rise  and  con¬ 
tinuance  of  the  Nonpartisan  League,  the  agri¬ 
cultural  bloc  in  Congress,  and  above  all  the  re¬ 
markable  development  of  the  American  Farm 
Bureau  Federation,  at  present  the  most  power¬ 
ful  farmers’  organization  which  we  have  had 
in  the  United  States  in  recent  times,  if  not  in 
all  our  history — these,  I  say,  are  distinct,  defi¬ 
nite,  significant  aspects  of  a  genuine  farmers’ 
movement  in  North  America. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  world  is  witnessing 
the  most  widespread,  the  most  determined,  and 
the  most  powerful  agrarian  uprising  in  all  his- 


The  Need  of  a  Christian  Program  31 

tory.  And  this  fact,  quite  in  itself,  demands 
that  we  shall  attempt  to  make  this  movement 
thoroughly  Christian.  To-day  it  probably  has 
in  it  as  much  Christianity  as  has  any  other 
economic  movement,  and  probably  no  more.  It 
is  a  phenomenon,  however,  not  to  be  ignored 
or  neglected,  particularly  by  those  who  believe 
that  the  Christianizing  of  the  social  order  is 
the  most  imperative  demand  of  our  day. 

The  Inevitable  Segregation  of  Farmers 

We  are  frequently  warned  against  trying  to 
build  a  wall  of  separation  between  the  urban 
groups  and  the  rural  groups.  We  are  re¬ 
minded  that  human  nature  is  much  the  same 
whether  in  city  or  in  country.  We  are  urged 
to  deprecate  the  growth  of  class  consciousness 
on  the  part  of  the  farmers.  But  after  all,  is 
there  any  escape  from  an  inevitable  segrega¬ 
tion  of  rural  folk?  As  a  matter  of  fact  they 
do  live  apart  from  the  urban  populations. 
Even  if  they  live  in  villages,  these  are  rural 
villages;  there  is  no  mistaking  them.  The 
rural  environment  is  not  the  city  environment. 
There  is  a  “rural  mind.”  True,  the  instincts 
of  rural  people  are  the  same  as  those  of  other 


32  A  Christian  Program 

people,  but  these  instincts  come  to  expression 
through  different  channels,  simply  because  the 
spiritual  topography,  so  to  speak,  differs  from 
that  of  the  city.  But  even  if  we  cannot  sustain 
theoretically,  as  I  think  we  can,  this  idea  of 
the  necessary  apartness  of  the  rural  people, 
in  the  realm  of  practical  service  there  can  be 
no  doubt.  The  moment  the  city-trained  teacher 
is  transplanted  to  the  country  school,  she  dis¬ 
covers  a  difference.  When  the  city-trained 
pastor  takes  a  country  church,  he  realizes  that 
he  is  in  a  new  atmosphere.  When  the  city- 
trained  social  worker  attempts  rural  projects 
he  finds  a  new  class  of  “cases.”  Rural  folk 
must  be  “handled”  differently.  When  they  are 
talked  to  they  must  be  addressed  differently. 
To  advocate  attention  to  rural  affairs  as  such 
is  not  to  encourage  separateness.  It  is  merely 
efficient  specialization.  There  are,  for  exam¬ 
ple,  nine  hundred  social  agencies  in  Massachu¬ 
setts  practically  all  urban.  In  general,  the 
rural  school  has  been  neglected  in  our  educa¬ 
tion  reform,  the  rural  church  in  our  religious 
advancement,  the  agricultural  industry  in  our 
discussion  of  industrial  reform. 

Doubtless  the  rural  part  of  our  civilization 


The  Need  of  a  Christian  Program  33 

must  be  fully  knit  with  urban  civilization.  We 
cannot  afford  to  have  a  distinctive  class  of 
tillers  of  the  soil  who  have  less  intelligence, 
less  economic  efficiency,  less  political  skill,  a 
less  satisfying  mode  of  life.  Unfortunately 
through  most  of  our  world's  history  and  in 
most  countries  the  farmers  have  been  inferior. 
The  most  notable  exception  are  the  American 
farmers,  who  are  quite  the  equal  and  probably 
on  the  whole  the  superior  of  similar  economic 
groups  in  the  city ;  though  there  are,  of  course, 
in  every  country  superior  farmers,  men  of  the 
very  highest  type.  But  whatever  the  actual 
situation,  as  we  look  into  the  future  we  want 
to  be  sure  that  there  is  not  an  essential  wall 
of  separation  between  city  and  country. 

But  we  cannot  escape  the  fact  that  there  will 
be  physical  segregation  of  the  farmers,  and 
we  must  do  all  that  we  can  to  see  to  it  that 
this  physical  segregation  does  not  result  in 
spiritual  or  social  isolation. 

It  is  only  fair  to  say,  in  calling  attention 
to  the  failure  of  present  Christian  programs 
to  take  the  farmer  into  account,  that  this  fact 
of  segregation  is  one  explanation.  Further¬ 
more,  the  agricultural  industry  is  not  based 


34  A  Christian  Program 

on  the  same  terms  as  urban  industry.  There 
is  practically  no  wage  system.  The  troubles 
between  employer  and  employee  do  not  arise 
in  the  same  manner,  and  indeed  they  scarcely 
come  to  the  surface  at  all.  And  so  we  have 
to  consider  this  fact  of  rural  segregation  in 
dealing  with  any  phase  of  social  reform.  The 
farm  people  are  essentially  like  other  folk  and 
very  likely  the  same  principles  of  human  ad¬ 
vancement  apply  to  them  as  to  people  of  the 
city ;  but  the  conditions  under  which  they  work 
are  different  and  their  program  will  have  to 
be  a  different  program. 

Shall  the  Rural  Two-thirds  of  the  World  be  Chris¬ 
tian? 

If  we  desire  a  Christian  world,  we  must 
make  the  rural  part  at  least  as  Christian  as  the 
urban  part,  for  it  cannot  be  ignored.  It  won’t 
drift  into  better  things.  It  must  be  steered 
into  them. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  argue  a  Christian  pro¬ 
gram  for  the  rural  community  mainly  because 
of  the  urban  program.  All  the  facts  that  bear 
upon  the  importance  of  the  farmers  to  society 
are  in  themselves  arguments  for  a  Christian 


The  Need  of  a  Christian  Program  35 

program.  Whatever  is  vital  for  humanity  is 
vital  for  the  farmers.  And  so  the  subject  of 
these  lectures  would  seem  to  be  thoroughly 
timely. 

LIMITATIONS  TO  THIS  DISCUSSION 

I  would  that  I  had  gifts  adequate  to  the 
treatment  of  the  subject,  though  it  is  impossible 
for  any  one  person  to  compass  the  problem. 
The  Christian  rural  program  will  have  to  be 
evolved  as  the  result  of  the  discussion  and  sug¬ 
gestions  of  many  minds,  particularly  of  the 
minds  of  the  farmers  themselves.  But  it  is 
important  that  a  beginning  shall  be  made,  that 
there  shall  be  an  attempt  to  state  the  problem, 
even  if  inadequately,  and  to  call  attention  to 
the  fact  that  the  rural  aspect  of  civilization 
needs  attention. 

The  discussion  too  must  be  so  brief  as  to  be 
little  more  than  an  outline  or  a  series  of  hints. 
It  cannot  possibly  be  comprehensive. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  doubt  if  I  shall  de¬ 
velop  a  program.  I  believe  in  programs;  they 
clarify  thought,  compel  constructive  attitudes, 
stimulate  the  imagination.  But  a  program  may 
be  as  arid  as  the  unwatered  mesa.  Back  of 


36  A  Christian  Program 

the  program,  in  front  of  it,  and  permeating  it, 
must  be  some  conscious,  all-embracing  purpose, 
some  definite  goals,  some  dynamic  vitalizing 
spirit.  Irrigation  ditches  are  programs,  wholly 
indispensable.  But  the  fountains  of  living 
waters  must  be  led  out  through  these  artificial 
channels  until  every  foot  of  land  receives  its 
beneficent  portion.  And  I  hope  to  talk  more 
about  the  water  than  about  the  ditches.  I  hope 
to  indicate  the  background  of  a  program,  or, 
to  change  the  figure,  to  describe  the  soil  most 
favorable  for  the  planting  of  a  program.  We 
want  a  Christian  rural  world.  What  is  a 
Christian  rural  world?  And  how  can  we  get 
it? 

Let  me  say  also  very  frankly  that  these  lec¬ 
tures  are  not  primarily  a  discussion  of  the 
Church  and  its  work,  except  of  course  as  I 
regard  the  Church  as  completely  essential  to 
the  making  of  the  best  sort  of  Christian  pro¬ 
gram  and  to  the  carrying  of  it  out.  We  must 
not  think  first  of  all  of  the  fate  of  any  social 
institution.  We  must  consider  rather  the 
fundamentals  of  the  task.  For  the  time  being 
we  must  look  at  the  need  of  humanity  rather 
than  the  glory  of  the  Church.  What  we  shall 


The  Need  of  a  Christian  Program  37 

come  to,  of  course,  is  to  urge  that  the  glory 
of  the  Church  will  be  found  in  the  effectiveness 
of  its  service  to  humanity. 

May  I  say  just  a  personal  word.  These  lec¬ 
tures  are  written  not  from  the  standpoint  of 
the  theologian  or  of  the  preacher.  There  is 
no  attempt  to  use  conventional  religious  lan¬ 
guage.  They  are  rather  the  expression  of  con¬ 
victions  on  the  part  of  a  layman  who  for  nearly 
a  generation  has  been  interested,  more  than  in 
any  other  one  thing,  in  those  issues  that  have 
to  do  with  the  development  of  the  highest  pos¬ 
sible  type  of  people  in  the  land,  in  America 
and  in  all  the  world.  He  believes  that  the 
Christian  way  of  life  is  the  only  path  to  this 
end,  that  human  problems,  both  personal  and 
collective,  are  to  be  solved  only  by  applying  the 
spirit  and  teachings  of  Jesus;  that  the  time  is 
at  hand  for  what  might  be  called  a  new  gospel 
or  at  the  least  a  new  interpretation  of  the  old 
gospel;  that  we  must  as  never  before  deliber¬ 
ately  seek  to  make  all  life,  all  institutions,  all 
group  effort,  essentially  Christian  in  purpose 
and  method;  and  that  in  this  revitalized  cam¬ 
paign  for  human  advancement  the  farmers 
have  a  place  of  commanding  importance. 


Chapter  Two 

THE  PRINCIPLES  INVOLVED 


I 


Chapter  Two 

THE  PRINCIPLES  INVOLVED 

WHAT  MAKES  ANYTHING  CHRISTIAN? 

The  Fight  for  Personal  Freedom 

For  a  thousand  years,  the  Western  world 
has  been  engaged  in  a  constant,  severe,  and 
even  bloody  struggle  to  secure  the  rights  of 
the  multitude.  We  have  fought  for  political 
liberty  in  order  that  each  man  might  partici¬ 
pate  in  the  common  government  of  all,  rather 
than  to  permit  a  single  man  or  even  a  small 
group  of  men  to  dictate  the  terms  by  which 
we  must  work  and  live.  We  have  sought  in¬ 
tellectual  liberty  in  order  to  permit  each  one 
to  do  his  own  thinking,  rather  than  to  be  bound 
by  the  traditions  of  the  elders.  We  have  de¬ 
manded  religious  liberty  in  order  that  each 
one  might  be  conscious  of  the  means  of  per¬ 
sonal  access  to  his  Maker.  We  are  now  en¬ 
gaged  in  a  struggle  for  industrial  liberty  in 

order  that  the  worker  may  more  fully  partici- 

41 


42  A  Christian  Program 

pate  both  in  the  conditions  and  in  the  rewards 
of  his  labor. 

Indeed,  as  we  look  about  us  to-day,  the  fight 
for  the  gaining  and  maintaining  of  personal 
rights  is  as  vigorous  as  ever,  and  the  battle 
is  far  better  organized  than  it  has  ever  been 
before.  Our  class  antagonisms  are  largely  in¬ 
sistence  upon  rights.  The  rights  of  minorities 
are  being  asserted  as  well  as  the  rights  of  ma¬ 
jorities;  for  there  are  dangers  and  injustices 
in  a  government  of  an  entire  people  by  the 
proletariat,  just  as  in  a  government  by  autoc¬ 
racy  or  oligarchy.  The  rights  of  small  na¬ 
tions  against  large  nations  are  being  stoutly 
defended. 

All  this  is  legitimate  struggle — legitimate 
because  it  is  necessary.  Apparently  men  are 
in  general  so  constituted  that  if  they  have  the 
power  they  are  inclined  to  “lord”  it  over  the 
rest  of  mankind  without  regard  for  the  rights 
of  others.  So  long  as  this  remains  true,  the 
struggle  for  rights  will  go  on.  For  men  must 
be  free;  the  dignity  of  the  individual  must  be 
recognized;  the  value  of  personality  must  be 
conceded.  We  may  not  hope  for  peace, 
whether  in  the  industrial  field,  in  the  realms 


The  Principles  Involved  43 

of  political  life,  in  the  intellectual  sphere,  or 
in  the  areas  of  religion  until  man  is  free. 

The  Essence  of  Paganism 

This  struggle  for  rights  reveals  the  charac¬ 
ter  of  our  civilization.  If  our  civilization  were 
thoroughly  Christian,  all  these  rights  would  be 
conceded.  The  struggle  of  the  multitude  for 
freedom  is  in  itself  a  demonstration  of  the 
correctness  of  the  views  of  those  who  say  we 
are  semi-pagan.  For  what  is  paganism?  Pro¬ 
fessor  Ell  wood  concludes  that  the  two  domi¬ 
nating  features  of  a  pagan  civilization  are 
first,  love  of  power,  and  second,  love  of  pleas¬ 
ure.  He  traces  these  instincts  as  they  came 
to  expression  in  Greece  and  Rome,  and  says 
frankly  that  not  only  have  both  of  these  ele¬ 
ments  persisted  through  the  centuries,  but  that 
they  occupy  a  prominent  place  in  our  twentieth 
century  civilization  here  in  America.  Business, 
industry,  politics,  seem  to  be  mainly  a  struggle 
for  power.  Men  seek  to  make  profits  for  the 
power  that  money  gives,  rather  than  for  a 
miser’s  delight  in  money  itself.  And  indeed 
more  than  we  are  willing  to  admit  we  honor 
the  money-maker.  Why?  Because  he  exem- 


44  A  Christian  Program 

plifies  to  our  imagination  modern  efficiency. 
A  few  years  ago  when  the  French  philosopher, 
Bergson,  returned  to  France  from  his  first  visit 
to  America,  he  said  in  a  public  address  that 
Americans  were  not  to  be  condemned  for  their 
bending  the  knee  to  the  rich  man,  because  in 
a  country  where  nature  had  not  yet  been  sub¬ 
dued  the  making  and  possession  of  wealth  was 
the  most  obvious  test  of  man’s  efficiency  in  the . 
necessary  work  of  the  age. 

What  is  true  of  the  individual  is  true  of 
groups.  A  fundamental  axiom  in  democracy, 
the  will  of  the  majority,  is  often  translated 
as  simply  the  will  to  power.  Minority  rights 
are  frequently  disregarded  in  a  democracy,  just 
as  majority  rights  are  often  disregarded  in 
an  autocracy.  Bolshevism  is  as  undemocratic 
and  as  unchristian  as  autocracy  or  oligarchy. 

A  significant  and  a  disturbing  fact  must, 
however,  be  recognized,  that  insistence  upon 
rights  often  eventuates  simply  in  a  drive  for 
power.  What  had  been  a  struggle  for  rights 
in  the  beginning,  so  justifiable  where  rights 
are  denied,  almost  unconsciously  as  rights  are 
gained  becomes  a  struggle  for  privilege,  for  a 
preferred  position.  One  of  the  difficulties  in 


The  Principles  Involved  45 

the  labor  world  is  that  while  for  a  century 
labor  has  sought  through  close  organization 
to  gain  simple  human  rights,  too  often  the 
power  thus  gained  through  organization  is  now 
used  to  maintain  a  comfortable  place  of  power 
without  the  slightest  regard  for  the  rights  of 
others. 

The  other  element  in  paganism,  pleasure, 
has  always  been  the  concomitant  of  power. 
And  again,  just  as  in  the  struggle  for  rights, 
the  distribution  or  democratization  of  pleasure 
has  a  wholesome  rootage.  There  is  no  better 
illustration  than  in  the  case  of  the  automobile. 
At  one  time  it  appeared  as  though  the  auto¬ 
mobile  would  be  the  symbol  of  comfort  for  the 
wealthy  only.  Thanks  largely  to  Henry  Ford, 
the  automobile  has  become  democratized.  Per¬ 
haps  it  is  stretching  a  point  to  speak  of  “the 
Ford”  as  a  symbol  of  comfort!  But  at  any 
rate  it  has  given  a  new  and  widespread  source 
of  pleasure  to  countless  multitudes.  One  of 
the  triumphs  of  our  American  civilization  is 
that  a  standard  of  living,  formerly  denied  to 
the  masses,  is  now  reasonably  well  spread  out, 
as  is  evidenced  by  the  electric  light,  the  com¬ 
fortably  heated  house,  the  modern  bathroom, 


46  A  Christian  Program 

and  the  almost  universal  use  of  meat.  But  here 
again  the  opportunity  to  gain  comfort  leads, 
even  among  the  multitude,  to  an  overemphasis 
upon  comfort.  I  speak  of  comfort  as  one  phase 
of  pleasure,  the  other  being  excitement.  A 
recent  novelist  has  spoken  of  Americans  as 
“excitement  eaters.”  The  motion  picture  craze 
is  a  good  illustration  of  our  inability  to  get 
on  without  something  external  to  attract  the 
eye  and  to  stir  the  emotions.  We  must  make 
sharp  distinction  between  pleasure  in  the  sense 
of  legitimate  and  necessary  relaxation  and 
recreation,  and  pleasure  in  the  sense  of  self- 
indulgence.  Too  big  a  dose  of  pleasure  is  just 
as  bad  for  human  kind  as  overeating.  One 
does  not  need  to  be  “a  Puritan”  or  a  joy-killer 
to  assert  that  selfish  pleasure  is  a  menace  with 
which  we  must  reckon  as  individuals  and  as  a 
nation.  A  curious  illustration  of  this  emphasis 
upon  comfort  is  tied  up  with  American  edu¬ 
cation.  Thousands  of  hard-working  parents 
sacrifice  beyond  belief  for  the  purpose  of  giv¬ 
ing  their  children  an  education  “so  they  won’t 
have  to  work” !  The  aim  of  a  good  American 
education  should  be  to  make  a  more  efficient 
worker,  a  worker  more  useful  to  society,  a 


The  Principles  Involved  47 

happier  worker.  Neither  a  high  school  nor  a 
college  diploma  should  ever  be  a  ticket  into 
the  palace  of  pleasure  and  ease,  but  rather  a 
commission  to  toil  for  the  good  of  mankind. 
It  is  a  pathetic  reversal  of  all  of  the  funda¬ 
mental  ideas  of  a  Christian  civilization  to  re¬ 
gard  education  as  a  means  of  escaping  work. 

I  suspect  that  the  reason  why  men  like 
Rauschenbusch  and  Ellwood  speak  of  our 
American  civilization  as  half  pagan  and  half 
Christian,  is  that  they  have  recognized  that 
while  the  great  ideals  of  right  and  freedom  and 
justice  and  dignity  of  personality  are  really 
at  the  root  of  our  modern  progress,  these  ideals 
have  not  yet  succeeded  in  conquering  the  age¬ 
long  habits  of  the  jungle,  and  indeed  that  in 
some  of  their  manifestations  the  very  blessings 
of  our  time  are  bent  into  unfortunate  shapes 
by  the  old  pagan  ideas  of  the  love  of  personal 
power  and  the  delight  in  personal  pleasure. 

Rights  and  Duties 

I  said  a  moment  ago  that  if  our  civilization 
were  truly  Christian  there  would  be  no  struggle 
for  rights,  for  rights  would  be  conceded;  and 
that  remark,  I  think,  leads  us  to  the  bridge 


48  A  Christian  Program 

that  spans  the  chasm  between  a  non-Christian 
and  a  Christian  program  for  society.  For 
what  are  rights?  Is  not  our  insistence  upon 
our  rights  simply  a  means  of  serving  notice 
upon  somebody  else  that  he  is  neglecting  his 
duty  toward  us?  Are  not  rights  and  duties 
correlative  terms.  My  right  is  your  duty,  and 
my  duty  your  right.  May  I  call  any  privilege 
of  mine  a  right  unless  it  represents  somebody 
else’s  duty  to  me?  Will  you  concede  to  me 
any  right  that  you  would  not  be  obliged  to 
admit  becomes  your  duty  toward  me?  The 
struggle  for  right  comes  to  be  the  same  thing 
as  an  effort  to  tell  other  people  what  their  duty 
is  toward  the  individual  or  the  class  asserting 
the  right.  To  put  the  matter  bluntly,  if  we 
were  to  transfer  the  emphasis  in  human  rela¬ 
tions  upon  our  duty  to  others ,  rather  than  upon 
the  rights  due  us  from  others ,  we  woidd  at 
once  Christianize  our  civilization .  Is  not  that 
the  central  idea  in  the  Golden  Rule?  If  I  do 
unto  you  as  I  would  like  to  have  you  do  unto 
me,  I  have  suggested  to  you  as  well  as  to  myself 
a  rule  of  conduct,  a  rule  based  on  the  assertion 
of  mutual  obligations. 

The  difficulty  of  actually  securing  progress 


The  Principles  Involved  49 

by  depending  entirely  upon  insistence  upon 
rights  is  worth  a  moment’s  consideration. 
First  of  all,  insistence  upon  rights  tends  to 
minimize  the  idea  of  duty.  In  spite  of  the 
fact  that  when  I  assert  my  right  I  really  assert 
your  duty,  your  response  to  my  demand  is 
likely  to  be,  not  a  recognition  of  your  duty, 
but  the  assertion  of  some  other  right  of  yours, 
that  is  the  assertion  of  my  duty.  Psychologi¬ 
cally,  the  effect  of  a  demand  for  rights  is  to 
stir  counter-demands  for  rights.  If  there  were 
a  perfect  balance,  if  every  time  I  claimed  a 
right  you  claimed  an  equally  good  right,  then 
we  would  both  be  led  to  do  our  duty  to  each 
other.  But  that  brings  us  to  a  second  difficulty, 
namely,  that  the  very  habit  of  insisting  upon 
my  rights  gets  me  into  the  mood  of  thinking 
that  every  man’s  hand  is  against  me.  It  makes 
me  still  more  inclined  to  fight  for  further 
rights.  It  tends  to  take  away  that  keen  sense 
of  obligation  which  lies  at  the  very  foundation 
of  human  relationships. 

Again  we  conclude  that  if  we  could  persuade 
people  to  emphasize  their  own  duties  more 
strongly  than  they  emphasize  their  own  rights, 
and  to  give  only  minor  attention  to  telling  other 


50  A  Christian  Program 

people  what  their  duties  are,  human  progress 
would  be  much  more  rapid,  justice  would  be 
much  more  in  evidence,  and  the  Christian  spirit 
would  have  greater  sway. 

I  am  quite  mindful  that  we  usually  regard 
the  word  duty  as  something  hard  and  unpleas¬ 
ant,  something  distasteful  and  cold-blooded, 
perhaps  something  even  that  constantly  takes 
the  joy  out  of  life.  Perhaps  we  might  use 
the  word  love  in  place  of  duty  if  we  had  not 
become  so  habituated  to  thinking  of  love  as 
something  soft,  merely  good,  sentimental.  Of 
course  love,  as  Jesus  used  the  word,  is  virile, 
masculine,  powerful,  although  perfectly  sym¬ 
pathetic  and  friendly  as  well.  Let  us  try  to 
think  of  loving  duty,  or  duty-centered  love, 
as  the  first  term  in  a  Christian  program,  as 
the  fundamental  attitude  of  the  mind  of  people 
belonging  to  a  Christian  community,  as  the 
main  force  to  be  released  in  the  building  of 
a  real  Kingdom  of  God. 

Obligation  as  a  Christian  Principle 

Have  we  not  indicated  the  parting  of  the 
Ways?  Is  not  the  main  distinction  between  a 
non-Christian  and  a  Christian  attitude  that  the 


The  Principles  Involved  51 

one  is  motivated  mainly  by  the  love  of  power, 
the  demand  for  privilege,  the  insistence  upon 
rights;  while  the  other  seeks  to  know  one’s 
obligations,  one’s  duties,  one’s  chance  to  help, 
one’s  ability  to  serve?  Self-getting  and  self- 
indulgence  are  essentially  pagan;  self-giving  is 
essentially  Christian. 

There  is,  however,  another  approach  to  the 
answer  to  the  question,  “What  makes  a  thing 
Christian?”  or  “What  is  a  Christian  pro¬ 
gram?”  and  this  should  now  command  our 
brief  consideration.  This  approach  has  to  do 
with  something  fundamental  lying  back  of  this 
distinction  between  rights  and  duties,  between 
power  and  service,  between  self-indulgence  and 
self-giving.  Or  perhaps  it  is  really  an  analysis 
of  the  purpose  of  obligation.  At  any  rate  it 
has  to  do  with  purpose;  for,  as  John  Bascom 
has  said,  “The  real  solution  of  the  problem  of 
individual  growth  is  the  discovery  of  some 
adequate  purpose  to  which  all  one’s  powers 
may  be  directed.”  And  so  we  must  ask  our¬ 
selves,  What  are  the  ends  of  living? 

Why  Are  We  Here? 

Is  there  any  other  adequate  answer  than  that 


52  A  Christian  Program 

we  are  here  to  grow,  that  each  human  being 
during  his  life  on  the  earth  should  come  to  his 
largest  possible  capacity  ?  And  this  is  not  only 
personal,  but  racial.  The  development  of  a 
race  of  men  who  represent  the  maximum  pos¬ 
sibilities  of  human  character  is  the  largest  out¬ 
look  for  humanity  which  the  mind  of  man  has 
been  able  to  conceive.  We  are  on  the  road 
toward  perfection,  individually  and  collectively, 
or  else  there  is  no  meaning  whatever  to  life. 
This  character  building,  on  the  part  of  every 
individual,  calls  for  a  healthy  body,  a  clear 
mind,  a  firm  will,  a  friendly  attitude,  a  con¬ 
sciousness  of  the  possibilities  of  the  human 
soul. 

There  will  be  those  who  will  say  at  once, 
“But  this  is  a  selfish  objective;  it  assumes  that 
the  very  thing  you  have  objected  to,  the  em¬ 
phasis  upon  self,  is  to  be  erected  into  the  main 
goal  of  life.”  Not  so;  for  the  moment  we  ana¬ 
lyze  the  conditions  of  growth,  we  find  that  it 
must  follow  the  law  of  indirection,  that  it  is 
a  by-product  of  many  activities.  We  cannot 
by  taking  thought  add  unto  our  stature.  We 
cannot  indeed  grow  solely  by  a  self-centered 
process  of  culture,  or  by  forever  seeking  our 


The  Principles  Involved  53 

rights.  The  struggle  for  the  life  of  others  in¬ 
duces  more  growth  than  the  struggle  for  one’s 
own  life.  The  development  of  a  sound  body 
and  a  clear  mind  and  a  firm  will  and  a  free 
spirit,  not  primarily  for  the  sake  of  possessing 
those  qualities,  but  primarily  in  order  that  the 
improved  man  may  be  of  larger  use  to  his 
fellow  men,  is  the  surest,  sanest  way  to  indi¬ 
vidual  development. 

However,  a  great  stumblingblock  fills  our 
pathway.  How  often  we  hear  it  said,  “Human 
nature  is  pretty  much  the  same  as  it  was  two 
thousand  years  ago,”  or  “You  cannot  change 
human  nature.”  We  cannot  deny  that  often¬ 
times  if  we  take  the  veneer  off  our  civilization 
we  find  barbarism.  And  we  are  even  some¬ 
times  moved  to  admit  that  if  sufficiently 
tempted  no  man  is  safe.  Another  aspect  of 
this  same  difficulty  is  exemplified  in  the  state¬ 
ment  of  George  Herbert  Palmer  when  he  said 
that  ten  per  cent  of  all  people  are  constitution¬ 
ally  sour,  for  we  immediately  ask  what  per 
cent  of  people  are  constitutionally  critical,  or 
mean,  or  hateful,  or  jealous,  or  impure.  We 
are  obliged  to  recognize  these  unlovely  things 
about  our  human  nature.  They  are  here.  Our 


54  A  Christian  Program 

attitude  toward  these  difficulties  determines  our 
attitude  toward  a  Christian  program  for  soci¬ 
ety.  If  the  human  race  is  not  improvable,  our 
whole  theory  as  to  the  great  ends  of  life  falls 
to  pieces.  Indeed,  if  human  nature  is  not  im¬ 
provable,  what  is  the  use  of  living?  Let  us 
give  our  difficulty  full  evaluation.  Yet  difficult 
as  is  the  task  of  changing  habits,  and  especially 
of  purifying  the  waters  of  life  at  their  source 
if  they  have  been  contaminated,  the  truth  re¬ 
mains  that  Christianity  deliberately  seeks  to 
make  men  over.  It  proposes  to  eliminate  these 
unlovely  things  if  it  can,  at  least  to  subordinate 
them.  That  is  what  Christianity  is  for.  It 
is  to  remake  men,  to  give  them  a  re-birth,  to 
change  the  type  of  manhood  and  womanhood. 
It  is  a  reconstruction,  a  re-building.  It  is,  if 
you  please,  to  “amend  the  constitution’’  in  the 
case  of  those  who  are  constitutionally  sour, 
or  critical,  or  jealous.  If  human  nature  were 
perfect,  or  if  it  were  hopeless  to  improve,  in 
either  case  there  would  be  no  need  for  Chris¬ 
tianity.  This  idea  of  moral  fatalism,  whether 
it  comes  out  in  the  individual  who  says  and 
often  takes  pride  in  saying,  “I  am  built  so 
and  so.  I  have  these  frailties  and  that  is  all 


The  Principles  Involved  55 

there  is  to  it,”  or  whether  it  takes  the  form 
of  pessimistic  unbelief  in  the  possibilities  of 
human  progress  on  the  moral  side,  is  equally 
repellent  and  equally  untrue.  Good  and  evil 
are  still  in  battle  arrayed,  and  will  be  for  end¬ 
less  generations.  The  task  of  Christianity  is 
to  influence  all  the  innate  tendencies  of  human¬ 
kind  to  good  and  to  set  up  motives  that  will 
gradually  subdue  the  bad.  It  is  a  terrific  battle. 
It  is  Armageddon.  But  it  is  not  a  hopeless 
fight;  indeed  it  is  a  sure  victory  for  the  good. 

An  English  book  entitled  “Recent  Develop¬ 
ments  in  European  Thought”  has  a  stimulating 
introduction  in  which  are  these  words:  “The 
trainer  of  youth  dealing  with  human  nature 
in  its  growth  puts  no  limitation  to  its  powers 
of  goodness  and  activity.  He  deplores  the 
want  of  wise  methods  in  the  past,  and  if  he 
errs  at  all,  it  is  in  an  excess  of  optimism  in 
believing  that  with  new  methods  we  may  make 
a  new  man.  On  this  enlargement  of  the  soul 
we  build  the  future.” 

The  Means  of  Growth 

No  layman  has  better  stated  the  means  by 
which  the  individual  develops  toward  perfec- 


56  A  Christian  Program 

tion  than  Dr.  Richard  Cabot  in  his  book  “What 
Men  Live  By.”  In  briefest  outline,  the  means 
are  as  follows:  Work;  play;  love;  worship. 
This  formula  we  may  fairly  interpret  as 
Work,  for  both  self  and  others; 

Play,  with  others; 

Love,  for  others; 

Worship  of  a  common  Father. 

All  of  these  activities  must  be  aimed  at  defi¬ 
nite  things.  They  all  involve  others  than  one's 
self.  They  all  represent  an  out-giving.  They 
spell  the  idea  of  self-culture  for  the  sake  of 
being  serviceable.  They  represent  the  inter¬ 
play  of  conscious  self-culture  and  conscious 
self-giving.  To  quote  Bascom  again,  “When 
we  cultivate  all  our  powers  and  find  their  ade¬ 
quate  use  and  reward  in  a  pursuit  of  the  well¬ 
being  of  men,  we  have  attained  the  primary 
conditions  of  individual  growth.”  Service, 
then,  is  the  real  means  of  personal  growth. 
Using  our  powers  for  the  well-being  of  men 
is  the  sure  way  to  the  goal  of  life.  He  that 
would  save  his  life  must  lose  it.  He  that  would 
be  first  among  you  must  be  the  servant  of  all. 


The  Principles  Involved 


57 


Motives 

It  appears  then  that  the  motive  of  service  is 
essential  to  growth.  But  how  can  we  be  sure 
of  motive?  Are  we  certain  of  our  own  mo¬ 
tives?  Do  not  most  of  us  act  from  mixed 
motives?  Surely  we  must  be  cautious  of  judg¬ 
ing  the  motives  of  others.  Can  we  test  mo¬ 
tives  except  by  deciding  whether  the  result  is 
what  it  ought  to  be?  We  can  and  will  decide 
whether  the  action  or  the  word  seems  to  be 
Christian  in  spirit.  But  after  all  the  main 
thing  is,  what  effect  does  the  word  or  the  act 
really  have  upon  people?  It  must  seem  to 
be  intended  for  good ;  but  mere  intention  is  not 
sufficient.  The  despot  may  be  beneficent,  the 
feudal  lord  may  be  friendly,  the  king  may  be 
kindly;  and  yet  the  interests  of  society  may 
require  that  we  abolish  the  despot,  the  feudal 
lord,  and  the  king. 

We  have  to  come  back  to  the  principle  that 
we  can  go  no  farther  than  to  judge  men  or 
urge  motives  except  in  terms  of  worth-while 
results.  We  must  judge  the  tree  by  its  fruits, 
though  we  may  not  know  what  is  going  on 
within  the  tree.  Does  a  particular  thing  make 
for  character ?  Is  it  a  clear-cut  obligation?  Is 


58  A  Christian  Program 

it  fair  to  the  community  as  a  whole?  Does  it 
have  the  sanctions  of  service,  that  is,  does  it 
secure  the  common  good? 

I  recall  vividly  a  gathering  with  some  Chi¬ 
nese  leaders  of  the  “New  Thought  Movement,” 
in  the  inner  recesses  of  a  great  Chinese  res¬ 
taurant  in  Peking.  These  men,  all  young,  were 
mostly  avowed  atheists.  We  were  discussing 
the  program  of  Christian  education  in  China. 
They  said  they  welcomed  the  work  of  the  mis¬ 
sionary  in  education,  but  they  thought  it  ought 
to  be  strictly  educational  and  not  in  any  way 
tied  up  with  Christian  propaganda.  When  we 
told  them  we  held  that  the  Christian  teaching, 
the  Christian  spirit  of  service,  were  essential 
to  education,  they  asserted  that  they  themselves 
were  thorough  believers  in  social  service. 
They  felt  keenly  that  the  humanitarian  aspect 
of  civilization  was  its  most  significant  aspect, 
and  they  approved  an  education  that  led  men 
and  women  to  service  to  their  fellows;  “but,” 
they  said,  “why  call  it  Christianity?” 

Why,  indeed,  call  it  Christianity?  Well,  as 
Christians  we  need  not  be  too  particular  about 
definitions.  Why  need  we  insist  rigidly  upon 


The  Principles  Involved  59 

specific  formulas  for  either  individual  or  group 
action,  even  on  the  ground  that  Jesus  framed 
them?  Are  we  not  rather  to  accept  any  solu¬ 
tion  of  a  modern  problem  that  is  in  accordance 
with  the  spirit  and  the  attitude  of  the  Master  ? 
For  that,  after  all,  is  the  vital  and  sufficient 
test.  Suppose  some  do  call  it  humanitarian- 
ism.  Suppose  some  do  deny  that  it  is  Chris¬ 
tian.  What  matter,  so  long  as  it  exemplifies 
the  spirit  of  Jesus?  Yet  we  are  forced  to  ask 
ourselves, 

What  Is  the  Religious  Dynamic  in  Motive t 

It  seems  to  me  that  in  making  a  Christian 
program  for  society  we  have  here  another  of 
those  test  questions  that  we  cannot  dodge.  We 
have  been  so  accustomed  in  times  gone  by,  and 
some  groups  are  still  accustomed  to-day,  the 
moment  Christianity  is  mentioned  to  think  of 
it  either  as  springing  from  the  authority  of 
the  Church  or  from  the  authority  of  the  Book, 
whereas  in  its  essence  Christianity  lies  mainly 
in  the  authority  of  a  personality;  and,  let  us 
observe  again,  not  in  the  authority  of  a  formula 
or  dogma  asserted  by  the  person,  but  in  the 
authority  that  comes  from  an  attitude,  a  spirit. 


60  A  Christian  Program 

The  people  of  His  time  listened  to  Jesus  as 
one  who  spoke  with  authority,  but  it  is  evident 
that  this  authority  of  Jesus  was  not  the  author¬ 
ity  of  the  existing  religious  establishment  nor 
of  the  recognized  religious  leaders  of  the  time 
who  interpreted  the  law  and  the  prophets. 
The  “common  people,”  who  “heard  him 
gladly,”  did  not  analyze  Jesus'  teachings.  They 
were  tremendously  impressed  by  His  person¬ 
ality.  Can  we  believe  that  it  was  anything 
less  than  the  effulgence  of  this  great  loving 
heart,  the  power  of  this  marvelous  self-giving 
personality  who  walked  among  men,  that  made 
him  Master  ?  He  interpreted  God  to  men,  and 
men  to  themselves.  He  both  reflected  the  char¬ 
acter  of  God  and  revealed  the  possibilities  of 
men. 

Some  one  has  said  that  the  theology  of  Jesus 
consisted  chiefly  in  his  idea  of  the  Fatherhood 
of  God,  and  that  Jesus'  test  of  allegiance  to 
the  Father  lay  in  attempting  to  secure  a  true 
brotherhood  of  man.  If  so,  then  faith  in  God 
and  in  his  purpose  for  men  must  be  recognized 
as  central  in  a  Christian  program  for  society. 
But  its  corollary  is  the  fact  that  men  are  to 
work  out  God's  purpose  for  them  in  terms  of 


The  Principles  Involved  61 

mutual  helpfulness  and  of  common  allegiance 
to  the  great  goal  of  human  living. 

I  am  afraid  that  as  a  layman  I  have  been 
wading  in  rather  deep  waters.  What  I  have 
really  tried  to  do,  however,  is  simply  to  think 
through  as  any  layman  may,  and  without  too 
much  regard  for  the  literature  or  the  phrase¬ 
ology  of  the  conventional  discussions,  the  main 
ideas  that  seem  to  underlie  the  distinctions  be¬ 
tween  what  is  Christian  and  what  is  not  Chris¬ 
tian,  as  we  consider  the  actual  world  of  men' 
at  their  daily  work.  It  is  argued  that  the  main 
test  of  a  Christian  program  is  that  it  invokes 
the  sense  of  obligation  as  the  very  first  term 
in  a  man’s  attitude;  that  this  sense  of  obliga¬ 
tion,  however,  leads  us  to  consider  the  ends 
of  living;  that  the  great  objective  of  life  is 
the  search  for  the  highest  possible  human  de¬ 
velopment  ;  that  the  great  means  of  growth  are 
in  activities  all  within  our  reach;  that  for  the 
fullest  growth  there  must  be  adequate  motives ; 
and  that  the  only  adequate  motive  lies  in  an 
effort  to  become  as  conscious  of  God  as  Jesus 
was,  and  in  our  dealings  with  our  fellows  to 
exemplify  the  spirit  of  love  and  service  of 
which  Jesus  was  the  supreme  example. 


62  A  Christian  Program 

We  need,  however,  to  make  an  application 
of  these  principles  in  terms  of  something  that 
is  rather  definite  and  concrete.  Otherwise  we 
lose  ourselves  in  mere  good  wishes  or,  at  the 
most,  good  resolves.  And  so  we  now  ask: 


WHAT  ARE  THE  ELEMENTS  OF  A  CHRISTIAN 

PROGRAM  ? 

i.  For  Every  Man  his  Chance 

If  we  are  to  recognize  the  worth  of  persons, 
we  cannot  possibly  avoid  giving  every  person 
his  chance  to  be  worth  all  he  can  be.  If  our 
first  duty  is  to  grow,  to  make  use  of  all  our 
powers,  to  develop  completely  in  body,  mind, 
and  soul,  to  live  rather  than  to  dry  up,  to  reach 
fullness  of  life  rather  than  to  starve  life,  then 
we  must  have  our  chance.  But  we  have  no 
more  right  to  this  chance  than  has  any  one 
else.  So  we  recognize  the  worth  of  the  other 
man  and  the  worth  of  other  men,  and  our  duty 
to  give  them  every  opportunity  to  realize  and 
express  their  own  life. 

Nor  is  it  enough  that  we  shall  simply  offer 
an  opportunity  for  each  one  to  grow.  The 
Christian  program  calls  upon  us  to  encourage 


The  Principles  Involved  63 

and  to  stimulate  individuals  to  make  use  of 
their  opportunity.  It  is  said  that  oftentimes 
in  China,  a  man  falling  overboard  from  a  boat 
will  be  allowed  to  drown  under  the  very  eyes 
of  those  fellow  Chinese  who  might  rescue  him. 
The  Christian  spirit  will  not  permit  even  a 
would-be  suicide  to  drown;  people  are  to  be 
saved  in  spite  of  themselves.  Our  whole  mis¬ 
sionary  enterprise  is  based  on  the  determina¬ 
tion  of  the  Christian  to  see  that  others  have 
life. 

I  think,  too,  that  the  idea  of  tolerance  as 
exemplifying  the  Christian  spirit  comes  in  at 
this  point.  We  are  not  thinking  of  course  of 
tolerance  of  wrong  or  of  tolerance  as  simply 
straddling.  Tolerance  means  sympathy.  It 
means  also  a  rigid  adherence  to  the  right,  to 
the  ideal.  It  recognizes,  however,  the  fact  of 
human  weaknesses,  the  inability  of  all  of  us 
to  live  up  to  our  ideals.  It  makes  allowances. 
It  distinguishes  between  the  sin  and  the  sinner. 
It  recognizes  the  truth  of  Paul's  description  of 
the  two  men  within  the  breast.  Tolerance  with 
all  things:  in  the  family,  in  the  community,  in 
the  state,  in  politics,  in  class,  in  religion,  in  ra¬ 
cial  affairs,  among  nations.  Ah,  yes,  in  giving 


64  A  Christian  Program 

every  man  his  chance,  we  have  to  be  very  sym¬ 
pathetic,  very  broad-minded,  very  tolerant. 

This  matter  of  giving  equal  opportunity  to 
all  must  be  something  more  than  a  mere  the¬ 
ory.  A  few  years  ago,  I  attended  a  meeting 
of  educators  in  one  of  our  great  States.  A 
representative  of  the  State  Department  of  Ed¬ 
ucation  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  al¬ 
though  the  constitution  of  that  state  written 
nearly  a  hundred  years  ago  guaranteed  equal 
opportunities  to  all  the  citizens  of  the  State, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  never  in  all  that  entire 
century  had  the  boys  and  girls  of  the  farm  had 
equal  opportunities  with  those  of  the  city  for 
an  education.  It  is  idle  for  us  to  discuss  a 
Christian  program  for  society  unless  we  are 
prepared  to  insist  upon  real  opportunity  and 
are  willing  to  pay  the  price. 

2.  The  Common  Welfare 

What  is  true  liberty?  Surely  not  the  right 
to  do  as  we  please.  Are  all  men  equal?  Cer¬ 
tainly  not  equal  in  capacity.  The  right  of  per¬ 
sonal  opportunity,  therefore,  is  checked  at  once 
by  the  fact  that  we  cannot  stand  in  the  way 
of  the  opportunity  for  others,  nor  will  democ- 


The  Principles  Involved  65 

racy  progress  with  complete  satisfaction  if  we 
hold  that  one  man  is  as  good  as  another  in 
the  sense  that  he  is  as  able  as  another.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  democracy  needs  the  superior 
man,  the  expert,  just  as  much  as  any  other 
form  of  social  organization  needs  him;  and 
he  should  have  his  chance.  We  must  educate 
the  superior  boy  as  well  as  the  inferior  boy, 
one  equally  with  the  other.  We  will  not  neces¬ 
sarily  give  them  the  same  education.  We  will 
give  them,  however,  an  equal  chance  to  get  all 
the  education  that  they  can  master.  We  will 
give  each  the  education  that  fits  him  best  for 
his  best  service  to  society,  because  in  that  way 
we  minister  best  to  his  personal  good.  A 
Christian  program,  therefore,  while  it  guaran¬ 
tees  an  equal  chance  for  every  man,  modifies 
that  principle  at  once  by  indicating  that  there 
must  be  for  each  his  special  opportunity.  So¬ 
cial  purposes  and  values  are  essential  to  a 
Christian  program.  One  cannot  be  given  his 
chance  by  denying  another  his  chance.  There 
must  be  a  common  chance. 

In  fact,  one  of  the  difficulties  about  this  par¬ 
ticular  matter  is  that  most  of  us  think  of  equal 
opportunities  in  the  terms  of  the  old  pagan 


66  A  Christian  Program 

ambition  to  secure  power.  Now,  so  far  as 
rights  of  property,  as  freedom  of  speech,  as 
liberty  of  occupation  minister  to  the  larger 
good  of  all,  they  become  legitimate  parts  of 
equal  opportunity.  But  the  first  term  in  a 
Christian  program,  that  is,  giving  each  man 
his  chance,  is  modified  by  the  second  term, 
which  is  that  there  is  a  common  welfare,  a 
common  purpose,  a  common  development,  a 
common  good.  And  when  we  say  “common,” 
we  mean  common.  We  cannot  allow  special 
privileges  or  prerogatives,  or  opportunities  for 
even  our  most  efficient  social  groups,  to  stand 
in  the  way  of  giving  to  each  man  a  chance  to 
develop  according  to  his  capacity,  so  long  as 
that  development  is  consistent  with  a  similar 
chance  for  every  man. 

3.  Morals  in  a  Crowded  World 

I  think  the  major  part  of  our  difficulties  at 
the  present  time,  although  not  all  of  them, 
grow  out  of  the  fact  that  we  are  attempting 
to  apply  ethical  principles  gained  out  of  an 
experience  with  a  comparatively  simple  life, 
to  a  situation  that  is  extremely  complex.  If 
I  am  a  teacher  and  my  neighbor  is  a  coal  miner, 


The  Principles  Involved  67 

we  ought  to  be  able  to  work  out  our  mutual 
relations  and  our  mutual  services  in  a  fairly 
satisfactory  way.  I  teach  his  children  and 
he  keeps  my  house  warm.  But  when  I  live 
five  hundred  miles  away  from  this  miner  and 
he  is  one  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of  other 
miners,  and  they  are  working  in  a  mine  that 
is  managed  by  still  another  group  of  people 
who  do  not  do  the  actual  work  of  mining,  and 
this  managerial  group  represents  not  their  own 
persons  but  the  persons  of  still  other  numerous 
people,  a  set  of  owners  in  the  form  of  stock¬ 
holders  who  know  nothing  directly  about  the 
mine  and  are  not  interested  in  the  mine  except 
as  it  brings  them  an  income  from  their  invest¬ 
ment,  and  the  coal  is  brought  to  me  over  trans¬ 
portation  lines  that  represent  still  other  serv¬ 
ices  and  is  managed  by  still  other  groups,  and 
my  coal  is  delivered  to  me  by  several  other  sets 
of  people  who  have  no  interest  in  either  the 
miner  or  me,  and  expect  to  take  toll  for  the 
service  they  render,  I  find  myself  in  a  situation 
that  makes  it  next  to  impossible  for  me  to  deal 
justly  with  my  friend  the  miner.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  I  do  not  deal  with  him  at  all.  Yet  I 
am  profoundly  affected  by  what  he  does  and 


68  A  Christian  Program 

by  what  happens  to  him.  And  presumably  he 
is  similarly  concerned  about  me. 

What  we  are  obliged  to  discover,  if  we  can, 
in  a  Christian  program  is  how  not  only  the 
rights  of  groups,  but  the  obligations  of  groups, 
can  be  defined  and  influenced,  just  as  we  think 
we  would  like  to  define  and  influence  the  sense 
of  personal  rights  and  obligation  between  in¬ 
dividuals.  How  to  do  it  is  our  problem.  One 
way  of  putting  our  question  is,  “How  to  be 
moral  in  a  highly  organized  society.”  We 
have  to  settle  such  questions  as  to  how  to 
secure  fair  dealing,  the  relation  between  profits 
and  service,  advantages  and  disadvantages  of 
industrial  competition,  and  a  hundred  other 
matters  of  like  significance  and  difficulty.  The 
most  that  we  can  do  at  this  hour  is  to  suggest 
two  or  three  considerations  that  have,  I  think, 
a  rather  vital  bearing  upon  this  question  of 
group  morals,  or,  as  I  would  prefer  to  put  it, 
of  collective  religion. 

(i)  And  first  of  all,  I  should  like  to  say  a 
word  about  the  righteousness  of  justice.  We 
have  already  called  attention  to  the  fact  that 
the  struggle  for  rights  may  lead  us  astray. 


The  Principles  Involved  69 

But  we  must  remember  that  as  human  nature 
is  constituted,  resentment  of  ill  treatment  is 
in  reality  a  virtue,  or  at  least  it  is  a  virtue  so 
long  as  the  ill  treatment  deprives  us  of  valid 
essentials  to  growth,  in  other  words,  if  it  rep¬ 
resents  the  failure  of  some  one  else  to  do  his 
duty.  Oh,  if  we  only  had  the  power  always 
to  see  our  duty  without  being  reminded  of  it; 
but  most  of  us  must  be  prodded.  And  so  there 
is  a  very  real  sense  in  which  the  class  struggles, 
let  us  say  for  industrial  rights,  may  be  de¬ 
fended  fully  from  the  standpoint  of  a  Chris¬ 
tian  program,  because  it  is  only  in  this  way 
that  every  man  can  have  his  chance,  only  in 
this  way  that  the  common  good  comes  to  be 
recognized. 

(2)  Let  us  remember  too  that  there  is  a 
morality  in  efficiency.  If  I  attempt  a  piece  of 
work  and  do  it  poorly,  I  do  a  grave  injustice 
to  my  fellows.  A  train  is  wrecked  and  it  is 
shown  afterwards  that  there  was  a  defective 
rail.  Somewhere  some  man  was  inefficient, 
consciously  or  unconsciously,  and  his  fellows 
suffered  the  consequences.  Our  American  peo¬ 
ple  particularly  need  to  learn  the  immorality 


70  A  Christian  Program 

of  waste,  as  well  as  the  immorality  of  skimp¬ 
ing  our  job.  We  do  a  grave  injustice  to  our 
fellows  when  we  loaf  at  our  task. 

(3)  But  we  cannot  admit  that  inefficiency 
is  immoral  unless  we  also  admit  that  efficiency 
is  moral.  And  here  we  strike  I  think  one  of 
our  very  greatest  difficulties.  The  “iron  man” 
is  tremendously  efficient,  but  he  tends  to  spoil 
the  man  of  flesh  and  spirit.  How  then  can 
such  efficiency  be  moral?  Well,  evidently  there 
are  limitations  to  the  morality  of  efficiency. 
Evidently  a  higher  principle  must  be  invoked. 
And  is  not  the  principle  this,  that  industrial 
efficiency  must  be  gauged  not  merely  by  its 
return  in  terms  of  things  made,  but  also  in 
terms  of  the  effect  of  the  process  upon  those 
who  participate  in  it?  This  brings  us,  does  it 
not,  to  a  consideration  of  the  correlation  of 
profits  and  service.  Business  is  based  upon 
the  idea  of  profits.  Well,  what  is  an  honest 
profit?  Has  anybody  any  right  to  profit  from 
a  business  that  does  not  serve  humankind? 
Is  serving  humankind  giving  them  something 
they  want,  whether  it  be  deleterious  to  them 
or  not?  These  are  serious  questions.  I  see 
no  answer  except  by  invoking  the  general  con- 


The  Principles  Involved  71 

sideration  that  after  all  the  effect  upon  the 
character  of  people  must  be  the  vital  test  of 
the  efficiency  of  industry  and  business,  'that 
in  some  way  the  productive  processes  must  be 
so  arranged,  the  scale  of  profits  so  adjusted, 
that  the  welfare  of  people  shall  be  the  main 
concern. 

We  may  put  the  matter  another  way.  We 
may  use  science  for  man’s  benefit  or  his  de¬ 
struction.  One  scientist  isolates  a  disease 
germ,  another  compounds  a  deadly  gas.  Ex¬ 
plosives  are  used  to  clear  land  for  crops  and 
to  blow  a  whole  platoon  into  eternity.  We 
have  the  same  need  for  determining  the  best 
use  for  economic  laws  as  we  have  the  laws 
of  science.  Shall  business  make  or  unmake 
men?  There  is  of  course  but  one  answer.  A 
business  must  be  tested  by  profits,  yes,  but 
not  alone  by  profits,  and,  in  fact,  in  the  long 
run,  not  chiefly  by  profits. 

Another  aspect  of  the  problem  of  reconciling 
ethics  and  efficiency  is  suggested  by  the  dictum 
that  “this  is  a  competitive  world.”  It  is  a 
competitive  world.  Individual  and  racial  rival¬ 
ries  are  almost  the  most  conspicuous  phenom¬ 
ena  of  life.  The  economist  even  asserts  that 


72  A  Christian  Program 

human  progress  is  due,  not  to  the  desire  of 
the  individual  or  the  group  to  improve,  but  to 
the  desire  to  excel  some  one  else.  I  see  no 
solution  except  in  the  effort  to  substitute  com¬ 
petition  in  effective  service  for  rivalry  in  ac¬ 
quiring  and  possessing  and  displaying. 

Evidently,  there  is  little  hope  that  we  can 
make  progress  in  this  labyrinth  of  problems 
and  difficulties,  unless  we  can  create  a  group 
conscience,  develop  group  morality,  learn  how 
groups  may  deal  with  one  another  on  much 
the  same  basis  of  ethical  relationships  as  high- 
minded  individuals  may  use  together.  The 
worker  must  have  the  joy  of  work.  He  must 
have  the  spirit  of  service.  He  must  have  the 
sense  of  personal  obligation.  Otherwise  we 
cannot  have  a  Christian  civilization  in  an  in¬ 
dustrial  age. 

4.  The  Good  of  All  Humankind 

We  may  not  stop  here  in  the  application  of 
the  Christian  principle  of  obligation,  of  pour¬ 
ing  forth  the  spirit  and  attitude  of  love  and 
friendliness.  Our  sympathies  must  not  be 
parochial  and  narrow.  They  must  be  as  wide 
as  the  human  race.  Here  come  all  such  ques- 


The  Principles  Involved  73 

tions  as  antagonism  between  industrial  groups 
and  social  strata,  and  races  of  entirely  differ¬ 
ent  origin  and  nature  from  our  own,  the  miti¬ 
gation  of  excessive  nationalism.  This  prob¬ 
lem  is,  I  think,  largely  a  matter  of  balancing 
of  loyalties.  Surely  one  must  “to  his  own  self 
be  true”;  that  is,  he  must  be  loyal  to  himself. 
He  will  be  loyal  to  his  family.  One  is  expected 
to  be  loyal  to  his  community,  to  his  class,  to 
any  organization  to  which  he  has  joined,  to 
the  state,  to  the  nation.  But  why  stop  here? 
Is  there  not  also  an  obligation  of  loyalty  to 
all  humankind?  And  what  are  the  largest 
loyalties,  let  me  ask  you?  To  one’s  self,  to 
one’s  family,  to  one’s  community,  to  one’s  class, 
to  one’s  favorite  institution,  to  the  state  in 
which  one  happens  to  live,  to  the  nation  whose 
flag  is  our  own,  to  the  race  in  which  we  hap¬ 
pen  to  be  born,  to  the  whole  world  of  men  and 
women?  We  cannot  stop  short  of  world  think¬ 
ing  and  world  obligations.  For  as  another  has 
said :  “Most  of  all  for  the  healing  of  the  world 
is  the  greater  soul  needed,  with  the  world  con¬ 
sciousness,  some  knowledge,  some  sympathy, 
some  hope  for  all  mankind.” 


74  A  Christian  Program 

5.  The  Inner  Life 

Social  programs  as  a  rule  deal  with  the  con¬ 
ditions  under  which  people  are  to  work  and 
live.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  is  the 
business  of  a  Christian  democracy  to  make  a 
physical  and  social  environment  favorable  for 
all.  There  is  the  possibility,  no  doubt,  of  mak¬ 
ing  things  too  easy,  too  comfortable;  but  in 
general  we  may  disregard  that  possibility  and 
insist  that  society  shall  remove  all  untoward 
and  limiting  conditions  for  human  develop¬ 
ment.  Religion  should  lead  people  into  such 
regions  of  the  inner  life  that  they  can  measura¬ 
bly  fulfill  this  life  in  any  environment,  favor¬ 
able  or  unfavorable.  True,  this  is  a  counsel 
of  perfection,  but  it  points  the  way  toward  one 
of  the  important  aspects  of  the  service  of  re¬ 
ligion.  It  means  such  nourishment  for  the 
human  soul  as  shall  give  capacity  and  power 
in  any  atmosphere.  It  puts  iron  into  the  soul. 
It  enables  a  man  to  meet  disappointment,  diffi¬ 
culty,  the  limitations  of  life  (sometimes  the 
hardest  of  all  difficulties  to  endure),  disease, 
death  itself.  No  doubt  a  pagan  world  would 
try  to  have  things  reasonably  comfortable,  at 
least  for  some  people;  Christianity  would  ask 


The  Principles  Involved  75 

people  to  rise  above  the  conditions  that  life 
may  bring.  Far  be  it  from  me  to  advocate 
acquiescence  in  any  injustices.  But  we  must 
learn  to  live  even  if  we  do  not  have  luxury 
or  comfort,  or  even  necessities.  And  we  must 
learn  to  live  grandly  and  as  completely  as  pos¬ 
sible,  albeit  under  restrictions  and  in  a  narrow 
place.  The  real  triumph  of  the  Christian  spirit 
is  to  rise  above  circumstances.  Any  Christian 
program  that  fails  to  stress  the  dominance  of 
this  inner  life  is  an  inadequate  program. 

For  this  inner  life  is  the  very  center  of  in¬ 
dividuality.  Out  of  the  heart  are  the  issues 
of  life — human  loves  and  hates,  all  thoughts 
and  imaginings,  the  fountain  of  desire  and  of 
hope  and  of  fear.  No  matter  how  successful 
we  are  in  expressing  our  thought,  there  still 
remains  a  vast  region  of  which  others  cannot 
know.  No  matter  how  loving  and  tender,  there 
still  remain  depths  of  affection  that  no  one 
can  recognize.  No  matter  how  open-minded 
and  unreserved,  we  still  cannot  be  fully  known 
to  our  most  intimate  friends.  It  is  in  the  inner 
life  that  the  great  battles  for  character  are 
fought,  that  the  great  attitudes  of  mind,  such 
as  the  spirit  of  worship  and  of  beauty  and  of 


76  A  Christian  Program 

peace,  have  their  citadels.  It  is  here  that  char¬ 
acter  breaks  down  if  it  falls,  not  always  by 
assault  from  without  but  by  treason  from 
within.  It  is  here  too  that  true  strength  roots 
itself  so  that  the  winds  of  outward  circum¬ 
stance  may  do  their  worst;  they  cannot  reach 
the  soul.  Therefore,  each  man  and  each 
woman  must  be  given  food  for  this  inner  life. 
No  teaching,  no  activity,  that  does  not  reach 
to  the  heart  of  man  is  thoroughly  Christian. 
And  so  our  Christian  program  must  take  ac¬ 
count  of  the  power  of  this  inner  life  and  must 
make  provision  for  its  nurture  and  its  guid¬ 
ance.  Says  Amiel  in  his  Journal:  “To  win 
through  peace,  a  man  needs  to  feel  himself 
in  the  right  road,  at  the  point  where  God  would 
have  him  to  be — in  order  with  God  and  the 
universe.  This  faith  gives  strength  and  calm.” 
One  of  the  most  insidious  dangers  of  our  mod¬ 
ern  life  is  to  be  content  to  re-form  the  outer 
conditions  of  life  rather  than  to  re-form  the 
inner  spirit  of  life. 


The  Principles  Involved  77 

HOW  DOES  THE  PROGRAM  AFFECT  PEOPLE? 

Quality  of  People,  Not  Quantity  of  Things 

We  have  indicated  five  elements  of  a  Chris¬ 
tian  program :  that  it  shall  give  every  man  his 
chance  to  develop  to  capacity;  that  this  devel¬ 
opment  shall  be  in  harmony  with  and  on  be¬ 
half  of  the  welfare  of  others;  that  we  must 
learn  how  to  be  moral  in  a  crowded  world 
where  groups  deal  with  groups  as  well  as  in¬ 
dividuals  with  individuals;  that  there  must  be 
a  world  unity  and  world  spirit;  and  that  we 
must  sustain  and  nourish  the  inner  fortress 
of  the  soul. 

Just  as  we  indicated  that  the  parting  of  the 
ways  between  a  non-Christian  and  a  Christian 
civilization  lay  in  turning  toward  and  culti¬ 
vating  the  sense  of  duty  rather  than  securing 
rights,  so  the  sum  total  of  the  Christian  pro¬ 
gram;  can  also  be  put  into  one  sentence,  namely, 
that  all  human  activities  and  human  institutions 
are  to  be  judged  by  their  effect  upon  the  essen¬ 
tial  quality  of  people.  Our  test  of  modern  in¬ 
dustry  cannot  be  profit  alone,  but  what  sort 
of  men  and  women  does  it  produce?  We  do 
not  expect  to  have  business  carried  on  long 


78  A  Christian  Program 

at  a  financial  loss,  but  after  all  what  does  busi¬ 
ness  contribute  to  the  essential  growth  of  men 
and  women?  In  other  words,  the  great  differ¬ 
ence  between  the  Christian  program  and  any 
other  is  that  the  Christian  program  insists  that 
the  organization  and  life  of  society  shall  result 
in  better  and  happier  people.  From  the  eco¬ 
nomic  point  of  view  a  business  will  be  judged 
by  its  profits,  but  from  the  Christian  point 
of  view  the  great  test  will  be  what  effect  does 
it  have  upon  those  who  engage  in  it  and  those 
whom  it  serves,  for  we  know  perfectly  well 
that  a  venture  may  be  profitable  financially  and 
detrimental  to  people.  The  Christian  must  be¬ 
lieve  that  no  matter  how  profitable  the  business, 
it  is  not  a  success  unless  in  all  its  ramifications 
it  makes  for  development  of  personality,  for 
enrichment  of  character.  The  Christian  pro¬ 
gram  does  not  deny  the  validity  of  financial 
profit  as  one  test  of  success.  It  simply  insists 
that  this  is  not  the  sole,  nor  the  final  test. 

I  suspect  that  right  at  this  point  lies  the 
answer  to  the  question,  “What  is  the  future 
of  socialism ?”  (I  use  the  term  in  its  broadest 
sense.)  Suppose  business  privately  owned  and 
privately  conducted,  although  financially  sue- 


The  Principles  Involved  79 

cessful,  should  continue  to  fail  to  meet  this 
Christian  test  of  advancing  the  quality  of  peo¬ 
ple.  Or  suppose  it  militates  against  the  real 
welfare  of  human  beings.  What  is  society 
going  to  do  about  it?  Suppose  for  example 
that  the  price  of  success  on  the  humanitarian 
side  is  such  a  lack  of  profit  on  the  financial 
side  that  the  business  cannot  be  kept  up  by 
private  individuals.  Or  suppose,  even,  that 
the  business  is  absolutely  necessary  to  society, 
but  cannot  be  made  profitable  financially.  Ob¬ 
viously  a  Christian  society  will  provide  some 
means  of  carrying  on  the  business. 

The  starting  point  in  the  Christian  program 
then  means  a  radical  departure  from  the  com¬ 
monly  accepted  view  of  the  province  of  indus¬ 
trial  life.  It  proposes  to  substitute  the  spirit 
of  service  as  the  controlling  motive  in  life’s 
work  rather  than  the  spirit  of  gain;  and  so 
its  test  of  the  success  of  a  social  program  is 
always  what  happens  to  people  under  the  pro¬ 
gram.  It  proposes  further  to  discard  a  pro¬ 
gram  that  does  not  enable  men  and  women 
to  grow  in  body,  mind,  and  spirit  toward  that 
perfection  which  is  the  goal  of  human  life. 


80  A  Christian  Program 

A  Good  Statement  of  the  Case 

In  the  volume  already  referred  to,  issued 
by  the  Committee  on  the  War  and  the  Religious 
Outlook,  entitled  “The  Church  and  Industrial 
Reconstruction,”  is  the  following  list  of  prin¬ 
ciples  which  it  is  stated  are  implied  in  Jesus’ 
doctrine  of  the  Kingdom  of  God,  and  which 
are  the  standards  by  which  our  own  social  life 
must  be  judged.  These  principles  are: 

1.  The  supreme  worth  of  personality  in  the 
sight  of  God, 

2.  The  brotherhood  of  all  men  as  children 
of  one  Father, 

3.  The  obligation  of  service  to  one’s  fellows, 

4.  The  law  of  love  as  the  ruling  motive  of 
life, 

5.  The  duty  of  faith  in  God  and  in  human¬ 
ity. 

And  then  the  report  goes  on  to  say: 

As  to  the  specific  application  of  these  prin¬ 
ciples,  there  may  be  wide  divergence,  but  not 
as  to  the  principles  themselves.  Whatever  else 
they  may  or  may  not  believe,  Christians  are 
at  one  in  holding  that  man  as  man  has  value 
for  God;  that  he  is  a  member  of  a  family  of 


The  Principles  Involved  81 

which  Christ  is  the  elder  brother;  that  the 
members  of  the  family  are  to  be  united  in  mu¬ 
tual  service  and  helpfulness;  that  the  way  of 
life  in  this  family  is  love;  that  it  is  the  duty 
of  each  to  believe  the  best  of  his  fellows  be¬ 
cause  of  his  faith  in  the  loving  purpose  of  the 
God  upon  whom  all  alike  depend. 

A  Christian  Democracy 

After  all  that  has  been  said,  we  may  well 
summarize  the  whole  purpose  of  a  Christian 
program  by  saying  that  it  is  an  effort  to  es¬ 
tablish  a  Christian  Democracy. 


Chapter  Three 


SOME  APPLICATIONS  TO  RURAL  AFFAIRS 


Chapter  Three 

SOME  APPLICATIONS  TO  RURAL 

AFFAIRS 

A  PROGRAM 

I.  That  Every  Farmer  May  Have  His  Chance 
( i )  The  farmer  must  have  access  to  the  land 
on  terms  that  give  him  the  largest  possible  per¬ 
sonal  freedom  and  encouragement ,  and  that 
likewise  most  fully  assure  society  that  the  land 
will  be  used  to  the  best  advantage  to  society. 
We  are  to  assume  that  the  land  with  all  its 
resources  belongs  to  society  as  a  whole.  This 
is  quite  as  true  of  the  land  used  for  growing 
crops  as  it  is  of  land  that  produces  trees  or 
copper  or  oil  or  water  power.  The  justifica¬ 
tion  of  private  ownership  of  these  resources 
hinges  upon  the  use  that  is  made  of  them — 
whether  the  individual  owners  get  the  main  ad¬ 
vantage  or  whether  the  advantage  is  fully 
shared  with  society. 

Whatever  may  be  the  facts  with  respect  to 

85 


86  A  Christian  Program 

other  land,  history  seems  to  show  that  when 
farm  land  is  divided  into  comparatively  small 
parcels  and  put  in  charge  of  the  actual  tillers, 
on  terms  of  legal  ownership,  a  better  use  is 
made  of  it  than  when  it  is  held  in  any  other 
form.  Agricultural  students  the  world  over 
put  a  premium  upon  the  personal  ownership 
of  a  tract  of  farm  land  large  enough  for  the 
maintenance  of  a  single  family  under  typical 
or  average  standards  of  living  of  the  time.  On 
these  grounds  statesmen  in  Europe  have  en¬ 
couraged  “peasant  proprietorship.”  American 
“homestead”  legislation  had  the  same  end  in 
view. 

There  is  no  doubt  but  a  system  of  perma¬ 
nent  tenancy  like  that  in  England  may  bring 
satisfactory  economic  results  both  to  farmer 
and  consumer.  But  it  is  questionable  whether 
the  social  and  personal  results  are  as  good  as 
in  the  case  of  private  ownership.  That,  how¬ 
ever,  is  largely  an  academic  question  in  Amer¬ 
ica.  With  us  the  main  issue  lies  not  only  in 
the  increase  in  tenancy  during  the  past  gen¬ 
eration,  but  in  the  fact  that  so  large  a  pro¬ 
portion  of  this  is  of  a  highly  transient  nature. 
In  so  far  as  tenant  farming  is  one  of  the  steps 


87 


Some  Applications 

toward  ultimate  ownership,  it  is  good  rather 
than  bad ;  in  so  far  as  tenancy  may  become  rela¬ 
tively  permanent  on  terms  fair  to  tenant  as 
well  as  to  owner,  the  results  may  be  at  least 
not  wholly  bad.  But  a  system  of  transient  ten¬ 
ancy  makes  inevitably  for  poor  farming,  for 
meager  community  life,  and  as  a  rule  gives 
the  individual  tenant  small  chance  for  economic 
success. 

Access  to  farming  land  is  becoming  year  by 
year  more  difficult  and  will  continue  to  be  so 
except  as  vigorous  steps  are  taken  to  remedy 
the  difficulty.  The  virgin  lands  have  been 
pretty  well  occupied  and  farm  land  values  are 
increasing  as  a  consequence.  To  insure  easy 
access  to  land  will  require  a  thoroughly  de¬ 
veloped  system  of  farm  credits,  both  long  term 
and  short  term,  on  easy  payment  plans,  but 
so  guarded  as  not  to  encourage  mere  specula¬ 
tion  nor  the  assumption  of  over-capitalization, 
and  particularly  guarded  against  the  incurring 
of  heavy  financial  responsibility  by  those  in 
any  way  likely  not  to  succeed  in  the  venture. 
It  will  not  be  long  moreover  before  we  will 
need  added  legislation  in  the  various  states  in 
America  protecting  the  tenant  and  encouraging 


88  A  Christian  Program 

permanent  tenancy  or  ultimate  ownership, 
preferably  the  latter. 

(2)  “A  Fair  Share  of  the  Consumer's  Dol¬ 
lar This  quotation  is  a  rather  crude  and  pop¬ 
ular  way  of  phrasing  a  fundamental  truth  with 
reference  to  giving  every  farmer  his  chance. 
As  usually  put,  not  all  the  story  is  told.  There 
is  a  widely  used  statement,  for  example,  to 
the  effect  that  the  farmer  gets  only  one-third 
of  the  consumer’s  dollar.  This  proportion  is 
assumed  not  only  as  universally  prevalent,  but 
as  an  unfair  share.  The  fact,  however,  is  not 
universally  true.  The  farmer’s  portion  varies 
widely  with  different  crops,  in  different  regions 
of  the  country,  and  in  different  years.  More¬ 
over,  for  certain  products,  the  marketing  of 
which  has  been  organized  on  exceedingly  effi¬ 
cient  lines,  one-third  of  the  retail  price  for 
the  product  is  all  that  can  be  gotten  by  the 
grower,  all  that  is  expected,  and  is  apparently 
satisfactory.  The  will  to  produce  is  as  yet 
almost  wholly  unorganized  in  America,  and 
to  a  large  extent  unintelligent.  Not  long  ago 
much  was  said  in  some  of  the  agricultural 
papers  of  the  fact  that  a  certain  farmer  had 
sold  his  potatoes  for  20  cents  a  bushel  and  had 


89 


Some  Applications 

discovered  that  the  consumer  who  bought  those 
potatoes  had  paid  50  cents  a  peck.  That  seems 
like  a  gross  injustice  to  the  farmer.  But  it 
was  an  equally  gross  injustice  to  the  consumer, 

1 

for  these  potatoes  had  been  marketed  at  a  dis¬ 
tance  of  nearly  a  thousand  miles  from  where 
they  were  grown.  There  is  terrible  waste  in 
our  “hodgepodge”  method  of  relating  produc¬ 
tion  to  consumer’s  need.  Our  remarkable 
transportation  system  fails  to  a  large  extent  to 
supply  our  markets  with  products  grown  within 
relatively  local  areas  or  regions.  We  should 
attempt  to  devise  a  measurably  scientific  zon¬ 
ing  or  allocation  of  agricultural  production  in 
terms  of  consumers’  demand. 

With  these  qualifications,  however,  we  may 
say,  and  it  should  be  said  as  vigorously  as 
possible,  that  the  American  farmer  is  handi¬ 
capped  with  respect  to  the  return  he  gets  for 
his  investment  and  his  labor.  There  are  pros¬ 
perous  individual  farmers  in  almost  every  com¬ 
munity,  and  there  are  many  prosperous  farm¬ 
ing  communities.  Indeed  there  are  even  rela¬ 
tively  large  areas  of  farming  country  where 
the  farmers,  as  they  would  say,  are  doing 
“reasonably  well”;  but  the  average  income  of 


90  A  Christian  Program 

the  farm  family  in  America  is  all  too  small 
for  American  standards  of  living.  Making  al¬ 
lowances  for  discrepancies  in  figures  and  for 
the  fact  that  the  farmer  does  or  at  least  can 
get  a  substantial  share  of  his  food  supplies 
from  his  own  farm,  it  seems  to  be  a  fact  that 
not  only  is  the  average  income  of  the  farm 
family  far  below  the  social  student’s  estimate 
of  minimum  need,  but  even  considerably  be¬ 
low  the  average  actual  income  that  the  work¬ 
ers  of  the  cities  now  receive. 

Many  farmers  believe  sincerely  that  the  rea¬ 
son  why  they  do  not  get  a  larger  share  of  the 
consumer’s  dollar  is  that  they  are  being  de¬ 
liberately  robbed  by  the  middlemen.  There  is 
no  proof  that  this  is  the  truth.  There  is  ample 
proof,  however,  that  the  cost  of  distribution 
of  soil-grown  products  under  the  present  plan 
is  in  general  too  high.  In  some  cases  there 
are  too  many  intermediaries  between  the  farm 
and  the  consumer’s  table.  Often  there  are  too 
many  tolls  taken  and  sometimes  these  tolls  are 
extravagantly  large.  There  is  too  much  quan¬ 
titative  waste  in  the  products  themselves,  espe¬ 
cially  with  the  perishables  and  the  semi-perish¬ 
ables.  The  great  staples  are  often  handled  in 


91 


Some  Applications 

a  way  to  deprive  the  grower  of  the  full  value 
of  the  market.  It  was  interesting  to  note  re¬ 
cently  a  statement  that  with  the  price  of  cotton 
going  up  to  30  cents  a  pound,  the  beneficiaries 
were  not  the  growers  of  cotton  but  the  handlers 
of  cotton.  The  growers  of  cotton  evidently 
cannot  take  advantage  of  changes  of  this  sort 
in  the  market  unless  collectively  or  individually 
they  have  capital  enough  to  carry  the  crop  until 
the  market  needs  it.  Moreover,  they  must  take 
their  chances  of  loss  as  well  as  of  gain  due 
to  changes  in  market  conditions.  Herein  lies 
a  need  for  a  reformation  in  our  marketing  sys¬ 
tem. 

While  there  are  those  who  deny  the  right  of 
the  wage  worker  to  a  living  wage,  there  is  little 
doubt  but  the  principle  will  eventually  have 
fairly  complete  recognition  and  that  a  wage 
sufficient  to  meet  basic  human  needs  will  be 
the  first  charge  upon  any  industrial  organiza¬ 
tion.  I  asked  a  thoughtful  gentleman  the  other 
day  how  we  could  guarantee  to  the  farmer  the 
equivalent  of  a  living  wage.  My  friend  said 
that  it  was  not  necessary  in  the  case  of  the 
farmer  because  he  could  make  his  own  living 
on  his  own  farm.  This  was  entirely  true  in 


92  A  Christian  Program 

the  old  days  of  the  self-sufficing  farm,  and  it 
is  to  quite  an  extent  true  to-day.  But  it  should 
be  realized  both  by  farmers  and  by  the  food 
consuming  part  of  society  that  under  the  pres¬ 
ent  regime  of  commercial  agriculture,  when 
barter  has  practically  disappeared  and  farmers 
must  sell  products  for  cash  in  order  to  buy 
other  things  which  they  do  not  themselves  pro¬ 
duce,  there  disappears  in  part  at  least  the  old 
difference  between  the  wage  earner  and  the 
farmer  in  respect  to  source  of  real  income.  In¬ 
deed  it  is  a  fair  question  whether  the  majority 
of  our  farmers  should  not  make  their  farm 
unit  more  nearly  self-sufficing.  It  has  been 
stated  recently  that  forty  per  cent  of  our  Amer¬ 
ican  farmers  buy  a  considerable  part  of  their 
food  supply,  more  particularly  canned  fruits 
and  vegetables,  and  even  sometimes  fresh 
fruits.  This  habit  grows  out  of  a  high  degree 
of  specialization,  the  vastly  increased  use  of 
machinery,  the  scarcity  of  farm  labor,  and  a 
consequent  belief  that  the  farmer  can  use  his 
time  to  better  advantage  than  “fussing  with 
a  garden.”  The  substitution  of  canned  fruits 
and  vegetables  for  fresh  fruits  and  vegetables 
is  poor  economy  from  the  dietetic  point  of  view 


Some  Applications  93 

and,  even  if  each  individual  farmer  cannot 
grow  his  own,  every  farm  community  ought  to 
grow  its  own  supply. 

However,  we  cannot  take  time  for  further 
details.  This  question  of  a  fair  share  is  the 
most  pressing  agricultural  matter  of  the  time 
so  far  as  the  economic  interests  of  working 
farmers  are  concerned.  If  the  farmer  is  to 
have  his  chance,  if  he  is  to  stay  upon  the  farm, 
or  at  least  if  he  is  to  be  more  than  an  under¬ 
ling,  he  must  have  a  sufficient  income  to  main¬ 
tain  a  good  standard  of  living. 

(3)  The  farmer  should  have  an  adequate 
chance  for  agricultural  education.  The  farmer 
cannot  blame  others  for  all  of  his  ills.  There 
is  a  vast  amount  of  poor  farming  in  America, 
some  of  it  due  to  lack  of  knowledge,  some  of 
it  due  to  lack  of  energy  or  to  poor  management. 
It  is  foolish  not  to  recognize  these  facts. 
Doubtless  the  establishment  of  faith  on  the  part 
of  the  masses  of  farmers  that  they  will  get 
a  square  deal  when  they  sell,  will  be  a  great 
stimulus  to  them  in  reducing  costs  of  produc¬ 
tion  and  in  otherwise  making  their  farms  more 
efficient.  It  is  probably  true  that  the  American 
farmer  is  given  a  better  chance  than  the  farm- 


94  A  Christian  Program 

ers  of  almost  any  other  nation  to  get  technical 
education,  although  it  cannot  be  said  that  the 
system  is  yet  doing  its  perfect  work.  There 
are  still  vast  improvements  to  be  made  in  the 
system  itself,  and  there  is  even  greater  need 
of  stimulating  the  farmers  to  take  advantage 
of  all  that  modern  science  has  to  teach  them. 
Only  a  small  proportion  of  the  boys  who  come 
into  farming  year  by  year  have  had  any  spe¬ 
cific  education  for  farming.  Our  system  of 
secondary  schools  of  agriculture  is  still  in  the 
making. 

An  adequate  system  of  agricultural  educa¬ 
tion  will  deal  not  only  with  production,  but 
with  every  aspect  of  the  rural  question,  whether 
economic,  political,  or  social.  Moreover,  it  will 
not  stop  even  there ;  it  will  provide  and  develop 
a  system  of  adult  education  to  meet  all  the 
needs  of  farmers  as  citizens  and  intelligent 
members  of  a  democracy. 

(4)  There  must  he  adequate  social  institu¬ 
tions  for  the  countryside .  Perhaps  this  is  one 
of  the  severest  tests  of  our  rural  civilization. 
Can  it  maintain  schools,  churches,  and  in  fact 
all  necessary  institutional  life  on  a  basis  that 
will  give  the  farmer  an  equal  social  chance  with 


95 


Some  Applications 

the  dweller  in  the  city?  It  is  a  hard  saying, 
but  probably  a  true  one  that  the  tendency  is 
the  other  way.  As  cities  grow  in  numbers  and 
in  wealth,  they  have  the  ability  to  build  great 
institutions.  It  does  not  follow  that  the  educa¬ 
tion  a  boy  receives  in  a  million-dollar  school- 
house  will  be  a  thousand  times  better  than  that 
received  by  the  boy  in  the  little  lonesome  frame 
district  schoolhouse  so  characteristic  of  our 
rural  landscape  in  America.  But  it  is  wholly 
unreasonable  to  expect  that  a  great  system  of 
rural  education  can  be  maintained  on  a  level 
with  that  of  the  cities  unless  the  quality  of  the 
teaching,  the  training  of  the  teacher,  and  in 
some  measure  the  extent  and  value  of  the 
equipment,  are  somewhere  near  equal.  And 
that  is  not  the  case  to-day,  taking  the  country 
as  a  whole. 

And  so  with  the  Church.  The  effectiveness 
of  the  Church  does  not  depend  upon  great 
cathedrals  nor  eloquent  preachers.  Some  of 
the  most  genuinely  religious  people  in  the  world 
are  members  of  small  rural  churches  and  some 
of  the  most  effective  pastoral  service  is  ren¬ 
dered  by  underpaid  country  preachers.  But  it 
is  idle  to  believe  that  excessively  small  con- 


96  A  Christian  Program 

gregations,  especially  of  competing  sects,  often 
employing  preachers  poorly  trained  and  paying 
them  laborer’s  wages,  can  in  any  community, 
in  the  long  run,  serve  that  community  as  the 
Church  ought  to  serve. 

Probably  we  have  too  many  organizations 
and  associations  in  our  cities.  But  we  cannot 
get  on  without  collective  action,  and  our  ques¬ 
tion  is,  “Is  the  countryside  maintaining  on  the 
whole  as  effective  social  organization  and  as 
efficient  social  institutions  as  the  cities?”  It 
is  not.  I  think  we  must  insure  the  farmer 
better  and  more  efficient  institutions  if  we  are 
to  give  him  his  chance. 

(5)  At  this  point  I  want  to  speak  more  fully 
of  the  need  of  more  adequate  schooling  for 
farm  hoys  and  girls .  Unfortunately  in  one 
way,  perhaps  fortunately  in  another,  education 
is  under  fire.  There  is  a  widespread  dissatis¬ 
faction  with  results.  There  was  never  so  much 
criticism  of  our  American  education  as  we  have 
to-day,  not  only  on  the  part  of  the  public,  but 
on  the  part  of  educators  themselves.  Frankly, 
there  is  no  agreement  among  educators  as  to 
ends  or  means.  On  the  part  of  legislators 
there  is  an  inclination  to  prune  educational 


97 


Some  Applications 

budgets.  On  the  other  hand  the  discussion  has 
brought  out  such  disturbing  comparisons  as, 
for  example,  the  amount  we  spend  for  educa¬ 
tion  and  the  amount  we  spend  for  war  prepa¬ 
ration  and  reimbursement,  the  difference  be¬ 
tween  the  educational  budget  and  the  budget 
for  such  items  as  soft  drinks,  chewing  gum, 
and  so  forth.  To  tell  the  truth,  we  have  not 
yet  put  education  on  a  statesmanlike  basis. 

In  all  this  uncertainty,  the  country  suffers 
more  than  the  city.  It  will  be  extremely  diffi¬ 
cult  to  maintain  as  good  a  system  of  rural  ed¬ 
ucation  as  of  urban  education,  but  we  must 
do  it  at  all  costs.  It  need  not  be  the  same 
system  nor  so  elaborate  a  system,  nor  need 
it  have  so  expensive  equipment,  but  it  must 
be  just  as  adequate.  We  must  never  condemn 
our  rural  boys  and  girls  to  an  inferior  educa¬ 
tion,  whether  they  want  to  stay  on  the  farm 
or  whether  they  want  to  leave  it.  The  farmer 
must  do  his  share  in  maintaining  this  equality 
of  opportunity,  but  the  cities  must  help.  The 
significant  point  for  us  to  consider  in  this  dis¬ 
cussion,  however,  is  that  if  the  farmer  is  to 
have  his  chance,  his  children  must  have  their 
chance  for  a  first-rate  American  schooling. 


98  A  Christian  Program 

Without  doubt  the  boys’  and  girls’  agri¬ 
cultural  clubs  have  been  a  “veritable  godsend” 
to  the  children  and  youth  of  the  countryside. 
These  clubs  have  stimulated  interest,  devel¬ 
oped  enthusiasm,  taught  cooperation,  opened 
up  the  possibilities  of  farming  as  an  intellectual 
pursuit,  broadened  horizons,  stirred  ambitions, 
and  given  a  type  of  training  that  had  been 
largely  neglected  in  the  schools.  In  some 
States  there  are  in  motion  notable  “drives”  on 
behalf  of  modern  country  school  facilities. 

(6)  Farm  family  life  must  be1  kept  fine.  In 
no  occupation  is  the  home  so  intimately  related 
to  industry  as  on  the  farm.  The  interplay  of 
man’s  interest  and  woman’s  interest,  the  co¬ 
operation  of  the  entire  family,  the  inter-rela¬ 
tions  of  economic  and  social  motives  are  no¬ 
where  so  much  in  evidence  as  in  a  typical  farm 
home.  American  family  life  is  changing  and 
many  students  think  it  is  breaking  down.  Liv¬ 
ing  in  a  tiny  city  apartment  certainly  is  very 
different  from  living  in  an  isolated  farm  home. 
Which  is  the  better  ?  Which  is  the  more  help¬ 
ful  from  the  standpoint  of  its  effect  upon  soci¬ 
ety?  If  the  farmer  is  to  have  his  chance,  the 
farm  home  must  be  made  as  efficient  as  possible 


99 


Some  Applications 

for  the  making  of  citizens.  It  must  broaden 
or  at  least  maintain  its  conceptions  of  service. 
Its  significance  cannot  be  too  much  stressed. 

A  severe  but  a  fair  test  of  rural  civilization 
is  what  happens  to  the  farm  woman.  More 
than  we  realize,  the  farm  woman  is  the  focal 
point  in  our  rural  civilization.  Many  thou¬ 
sands  of  families  leave  the  farm  for  the  town 
because  of  the  woman's  point  of  view.  Many 
a  young  man  who  would  like  to  farm  gives 
up  his  hope  because  his  wife  does  not  want 
to  live  on  the  farm.  So  often  the  woman's 
work  is  sheer  drudgery,  with  unending  hours 
and  with  few  social  contacts,  fewer  even  than 
those  of  the  man.  The  ameliorating  effect  of 
the  telephone  and  rural  mail  delivery  and  par¬ 
ticularly  of  the  automobile  is  beyond  calcula¬ 
tion.  Nevertheless,  the  safeguarding  of  the 
higher  interests  of  the  wife  and  mother  is 
after  all  one  of  the  crucial  points  in  a  rural 
program. 

(7)  In  general  the  farmer  must  have  a  satis¬ 
fying  country  life.  He  must  feel  that  he  has 
at  least  a  measure  of  the  common  comforts 
of  his  time,  that  his  family  can  get  an  educa¬ 
tion,  that  they  can  have  reasonable  pleasures, 


100  A  Christian  Program 

that  they  are  not  looked  down  upon  socially, 
that  they  have  opportunity  to  grow.  A  satisfy¬ 
ing  country  life  means  that  on  the  whole  those 
who  continue  to  live  in  the  country  do  so  be¬ 
cause  they  like  it,  or  even  prefer  it  beyond  any 
other  form  of  work  or  living.  This  large  gen¬ 
eral  result  is  made  up  of  many  items,  but  it  is 
fundamental  in  a  program  that  gives  every 
farmer  his  chance. 

(8)  Personal  Growth  in  a  Farm  Environ¬ 
ment.  Farming  at  its  best,  I  believe,  will  “man¬ 
ufacture  men”  at  least  as  thoroughly  as  can  city 
life.  For  one  reason,  there  is  room  to  grow. 
The  family  life  may  be  wholesome,  the  roots 
of  character  may  run  deep  into  the  soil,  and 
the  branches  and  leaves  of  personality  may 
stretch  out  into  the  free  air  and  sunlight.  We 
have  here  almost  ideal  conditions  for  human 
living.  If  we  can  remove  stark  drudgery,  if 
we  can  banish  undesirable  provincialism,  if  we 
can  secure  reasonable  contacts  with  other  folk, 
if  we  can  maintain  adequate  social  institutions, 
we  shall  have  almost  perfect  conditions  for 
the  development  of  the  human  spirit.  The 
growth  of  personality,  individual  freedom,  joy 
in  work,  health  of  body,  contact  with  nature, 


Some  Applications  101 

these  ought  to  be  characteristic  of  the  rural 
environment. 

The  farmer  has  a  great  advantage  in  the 
fact  of  his  personal  responsibility.  He  is  man¬ 
ager  as  well  as  worker.  He  must  have  initia¬ 
tive.  He  is  largely  his  own  master.  He  is 
not  merely  a  cog  in  the  wheel.  Surely  this 
type  of  life  must  have  great  educational  ad¬ 
vantages. 

Let  us  remember  the  value  of  labor  as  Means 
of  Growth.  Let  us  keep  bringing  back  to  our 
minds  the  fact  that  work  is  not  a  curse,  but 
a  blessing.  It  is  a  strange  paradox  of  human 
nature  that  we  think  we  envy  the  people  who 
do  not  have  to  work.  We  like  to  look  forward 
to  the  time  when  we  will  not  have  to  work, 
although  we  condemn  the  idler.  We  know  per¬ 
fectly  well  that  for  most  of  us  idleness  would 
be  misery.  Could  any  one  invent  anything 
more  diabolical,  more  sure  to  destroy  man¬ 
hood  and  womanhood,  than  a  scheme  of  society 
in  which  nobody  would  have  to  work?  The 
Christian  view  of  work  then  calls  for  an  in¬ 
terpretation  of  the  real  meaning  of  work. 
Shall  we  treat  work  then  as  a  means  of  merely 
making  money?  May  we  not  go  about  our 


102 


A  Christian  Program 

work  not  only  in  the  spirit  of  service,  but  re¬ 
alizing  that  even  drudgery  has  its  compensa¬ 
tion  in  the  development  of  the  mind  and  the 
soul  of  the  worker? 

The  element  of  struggle  is  a  prominent  fea¬ 
ture  of  the  character-making  value  of  work. 
It  must  not  be  supposed  that  peace,  in  the  sense 
of  acquiescence  in  wrong  or  of  failure  to  meet 
issues  or  of  surrender  under  difficulties,  is  a 
part  of  the  Christian  spirit.  Quite  the  con¬ 
trary.  There  is  no  word  more  surcharged  with 
the  Christian  spirit  than  the  word  overcome . 
The  farmer,  for  example,  is  sometimes  thought 
of  as  following  an  occupation  that  “has  no  fight 
in  it.”  But  one  of  our  greatest  rural  leaders 
has  called  attention  in  poetic  phrase  to  the  con¬ 
trary  and  the  true  view : 

“Blow,  ye  winds,  and  lay  on,  ye  storms, 

And  come,  ye  pests  in  rabble  swarms, 

And  fall,  ye  blights  in  legion  forms — 

I  am  here:  I  surrender  not 

Nor  yield  my  place  one  piece  or  jot; — 

For  these  are  my  lands 
And  these  are  my  hands 
And  I  am  bone  of  the  folk  that  resistlessly 
stands.” 


(L.  H.  Bailey.) 


Some  Applications  103 

The  farmer  has  to  overcome  the  world  of 
bugs  and  the  world  of  diseases.  He  has  to  meet 
all  the  other  untoward  conditions  of  weather, 
such  as  flood  and  drought,  frost  and  burn¬ 
ing  heat,  hail  and  thunderstorms.  Indeed,  so 
much  is  this  the  case  that  many  farmers  are 
thought  to  be  fatalists,  and  many  more  ag¬ 
nostics,  with  reference  to  the  workings  of  a 
Divine  providence.  But  this  spirit  of  fight, 
this  overcoming,  is  as  fully  religious  as  any¬ 
thing  can  be.  For  these  difficulties  are  simply 
a  part  of  the  order  of  nature.  We  may  wish 
that  they  did  not  exist.  We  may  at  times  won¬ 
der  if  they  are  really  beneficent.  But  there 
they  are.  I  think  they  are  beneficent,  God- 
given,  not  in  the  sense  of  special  immediate 
detailed  providence,  but  in  the  great  order  of 
the  universe.  Man  was  put  on  the  earth  to 
subdue  it.  Subduing  it  means  struggle  and 
overcoming,  conflict  and  victory,  with  always 
the  possibility  of  defeat.  We  do  not  need  to 
dwell  upon  the  advantages  that  come  to  human¬ 
kind  because  they  have  to  overcome  these  diffi¬ 
culties.  Obviously  what  is  by  all  odds  the 
greatest  advantage  is  in  the  character-building 
process  that  comes  with  the  task  of  subduing 


104  A  Christian  Program 

the  earth.  Man  has  been  physically  and  men¬ 
tally  and  morally  built  up  in  this  process,  mak¬ 
ing  allowance  for  all  of  the  sad  elements  in  the 
story  of  this  struggle,  in  the  injuries  and  blood¬ 
shed  that  have  accompanied  it.  After  all,  it 
has  made  man  what  he  is.  And  what  he  is  to 
be  will  depend  in  part  at  least  upon  the  terms 
upon  which  he  makes  his  fight  for  compelling 
the  earth  to  yield  her  increase  to  him,  which, 
put  in  other  words,  really  means  compelling 
himself  to  become  subject  to  the  laws  of  God. 
For,  after  all,  the  fight  is  not  with  nature,  but 
with  man’s  own  ignorance  of  nature  and  with 
his  frequent  unwillingness  to  subordinate  him¬ 
self  to  the  law  of  nature.  Rufus  M.  Jones 
has  a  paragraph  on  this  point  that  is  worth 
quoting  : 

The  farmer,  in  his  unceasing  struggle  with 
weeds,  with  parasites,  with  pests  visible  and 
invisible,  with  blight  and  rot  and  uncongenial 
weather,  sometimes  feels  tempted  to  blaspheme 
against  the  hard  conditions  under  which  he 
labors  and  to  assume  that  an  “enemy”  has 
cursed  the  ground  which  he  tills  and  loaded  the 
dice  of  nature  against  him.  The  best  cure  for 
his  “mood”  is  to  visit  the  land  of  the  bread¬ 
fruit  tree,  where  nature  does  everything  and 


105 


Some  Applications 

man  does  nothing  but  eat  what  is  gratuitously 
given  him,  and  to  see  there  the  kind  of  men 
you  get  under  those  kindly  skies.  The  virile 
fiber  of  muscle,  the  strong  manly  frame,  the 
keen  active  mind  that  meets  each  new  “pest” 
with  a  successful  invention,  the  spirit  of  con¬ 
quest  and  courage  that  are  revealed  in  the 
farmer  at  his  best  are  no  accident.  They  are 
the  by-product  of  his  battle  with  conditions, 
which  if  they  seem  to  come  from  an  “enemy” 
must  come  from  one  that  ought  to  be  loved 
for  what  he  accomplishes. 


In  this  connection  we  must  discuss  the  use 
of  leisure.  It  may  seem  ludicrous  to  talk  of 
leisure  for  the  farmer,  especially  for  the 
farmer’s  wife.  Yet  for  most  farmers  there 
are  periods  of  leisure;  even  those  farmers 
who  work  from  sunup  to  sundown  during  the 
growing  season  often  have  a  period  of  com¬ 
parative  leisure  in  the  winter.  The  irregu¬ 
larity  of  his  leisure  time  is  one  of  the  difficulties 
in  the  farmer’s  program.  The  man  in  a  seden¬ 
tary  occupation  can  profitably  use  a  number 
of  hours  during  the  week  for  play  in  the  form 
of  games  requiring  physical  exercise.  The 
farmer  needs  no  such  type  of  recreation. 
Physical  labor  requires  longer  hours  for  sleep 


106  A  Christian  Program 

than  does  mental  labor.  The  out-of-door  life, 
with  its  hearty  appetite  for  food,  makes  read¬ 
ing  after  a  day’s  work  discouragingly  difficult. 
Many  farmers  surrender  completely  to  these 
difficulties  and  make  but  poor  use  of  their 
leisure.  No  rules  can  be  laid  down,  certainly 
not  by  any  one  who  stands  outside  the  farm 
itself.  But  leisure  there  should  be,  and  wise 
use  of  leisure. 

There  are  really  two  main  uses  for  leisure, 
the  one  for  recreation  and  the  other  for  re¬ 
laxation.  Recreation  implies  activity,  but  an 
activity  different  from  that  indulged  in  for 
work.  Wholesome  social  life,  games  in  the 
family,  as  abundant  reading  as  possible — these 
are  but  the  usual  suggestions.  I  would  like 
to  mention  another  outlet  for  leisure,  the 
farmer’s  peculiar  need  perhaps,  growing  out 
of  his  comparative  isolation  from  other  peo¬ 
ple.  He  should  visit  other  farm  communities 
and  other  farming  States  than  his  own,  his 
agricultural  college,  his  state  capital,  the  na¬ 
tional  capital  if  possible.  Attendance  at  con¬ 
ventions,  not  only  agricultural,  but  of  other 
types,  brings  him  new  contacts.  And  he  should 
take  his  wife  with  him!  He  should  also  fre- 


107 


Some  Applications 

quently  go  into  the  city  and  get  into  contact 
with  city  interests  and  city  points  of  view.  He 
should  come  to  feel  acquainted  and  at  home 
in  the  city.  The  value  of  these  experiences 
in  breaking  down  misunderstandings,  in  broad¬ 
ening  one’s  point  of  view,  in  getting  new  ideas 
to  think  about,  is  unmistakable. 

There  is  still  another  aspect  of  leisure,  and 
that  is  the  idea  of  relaxation ,  doing  absolutely 
nothing — horrible  thought  to  some  people,  for 
others  a  favorite  mood !  Let  us  not  make  light 
of  the  character-building  value  of  profitable 
relaxation. 


One  day 
I  went 

To  the  fields  to  rest. 

The  sun 
Hung  low 

On  the  rim  of  the  West. 

A  sparrow 
Chirped 

As  it  dropped  to  its  nest. 

And  my  soul 
Had  found 

The  boon  of  its  quest. 

(L.  H.  Bailey.) 


108  A  Christian  Program 

If  we  value  as  leisure  all  the  time  that  a 
person  has  for  thinking  of  other  things  than 
the  immediate  task  at  hand,  the  farmer  cer¬ 
tainly  is  to  be  counted  among  the  most  fortu¬ 
nate  of  men.  He  has  less  time  as  well  as  less 
opportunity  for  amusement  than  the  people  of 
the  cities.  He  meets  fewer  people,  has  a  nar¬ 
rower  range  of  human  contacts,  probably  has 
less  time  for  reading  than  the  average  artisan. 
But  for  brooding,  meditating,  thinking,  allow¬ 
ing  himself  to  ripen  as  a  result  of  his  experi¬ 
ence  and  environment,  he  has  time  in  abun¬ 
dance.  He  has  especially  the  time  and  the  in¬ 
centive  to  think  of  God.  He  lives  in  a  world 
that  makes  for  inner  peace. 

Thou  makest  the  outgoings  of  the  morning 
and  evening  to  rejoice. 

Thou  visitest  the  earth,  and  waterest  it; 
thou  greatly  enrichest  it  with  the  river  of  God, 
which  is  full  of  water;  thou  preparest  them 
corn,  when  thou  hast  so  provided  for  it. 

Thou  waterest  the  ridges  thereof  abun¬ 
dantly  ;  thou  settlest  the  furrows  thereof ;  thou 
makest  it  soft  with  showers;  thou  blessest  the 
springing  thereof. 

Thou  crownest  the  year  with  thy  goodness; 
and  thy  paths  drop  fatness. 

They  drop  upon  the  pastures  of  the  wilder- 


109 


Some  Applications 

ness;  and  the  little  hills  rejoice  on  every  side. 

The  pastures  are  clothed  with  flocks;  the 
valleys  also  are  covered  over  with  corn:  They 
shout  for  joy,  they  also  sing. 

2.  That  the  Farmer  May  Serve  the  Common  Good 
(i)  The  world  must  eat.  Food,  clothing, 
and  shelter  are  primary  wants.  Practically 
all  the  facilities  for  furnishing  these  wants 
come  from  the  soil.  Consequently  the  pro¬ 
ducers  of  these  needs  are  under  peculiar  ob¬ 
ligations  to  serve  the  common  good.  Of  all 
people ,  the  farmer  should  he  most  conscious 
of  his  usefulness  to  mankind.  The  converse 
is  true,  that  society  is  under  peculiar  obligation 
to  the  farmer,  and  from  society  the  farmer 
should  receive  the  utmost  consideration.  But 
the  farmer  has  this  advantage  if  we  are  to 
look  at  life  from  the  Christian  point  of  view, 
that  he  is  conscious  of  making  an  absolutely 
fundamental  contribution  to  society.  The 
world  could  not  live  without  him.  He  is  essen¬ 
tial  to  “maintaining  the  fabric  of  the  world.” 
He  is  indispensable.  It  has  been  said  that 
industry  is  the  conquest  of  nature  for  the  serv¬ 
ice  of  man.  We  may  paraphrase  and  say  that 
agriculture  is  the  conquest  of  the  soil  for  the 


110  A  Christian  Program 

service  of  man.  The  farmer  is  the  steward 
of  the  soil,  and  the  moral  aspect  of  land  owner¬ 
ship  cannot  be  disregarded  in  the  Christian 
program.  Every  little  farm  should  be  thought 
of  by  the  owner  as  a  sacred  trust.  The  mere 
fact  that  it  is  small  does  not  give  the  farm 
owner  any  moral  privilege  that  does  not  belong 
to  the  owner  of  a  vast  estate  or  of  immense 
mines. 

We  are  entering  upon  an  entirely  new  step 
in  our  economic  attitude  toward  agriculture. 
We  are  thinking  of  it  not  as  an  isolated  in¬ 
dustry,  but  rather  in  terms  of  its  place  in  the 
world's  food  supply.  We  are  emphasizing  the 
needs  of  humankind  for  food  and  other  soil- 
grown  products,  and  from  this  consideration 
we  are  working  back  to  the  part  which  the 
farmer  should  play  in  supplying  these  things. 

(2)  The  use  of  soil  for  the  welfare  of  soci¬ 
ety .  The  Christian  farmer  will  seek  to  get 
the  most  from  the  land,  not  merely  because 
he  owes  it  to  himself  and  to  his  family,  but 
because  he  owes  it  to  society  at  large  to  use 
the  farm  soil  to  its  fullest  capacity.  We  are 
not  now  discussing  the  moral  right  of  the 
farmers  as  a  class  to  restrict  production,  but 


Ill 


Some  Applications 

rather  the  duty  of  the  individual  farmer  to 
use,  in  the  best  possible  way,  that  portion  of 
land  that  has  been  assigned  to  him  by  society, 
and  which  he  holds  at  the  option  of  society. 

The  duty  to  use  land  to  the  full  assumes 
as  a  corollary  the  maintenance  of  the  fertility 
of  the  land.  Unfortunately,  the  farmers  of 
the  earth  have  not  maintained  soil  fertility, 
generally  speaking.  True,  in  certain  countries 
land  has  been  tilled  continuously  for  hundreds 
of  years,  and  in  China  and  in  India,  for  ex¬ 
ample,  for  thousands  of  years;  but  whole  em¬ 
pires  have  degenerated  and  even  gone  to  pieces 
because  they  could  not  maintain  their  food 
supply.  A  recent  author  asserts  that  the  fall 
of  Rome  was  due  primarily  to  the  decline  in 
soil  fertility.  The  farmer’s  obligation  is  per¬ 
fectly  clear,  yet  many  farmers  never  think  of 
their  duty  to  maintain  soil  fertility  for  future 
generations  or  for  the  sake  of  society.  Plainly 
this  duty  is  one  of  the  elements  in  a  Christian 
program. 

(3)  The  farmer  must  make  his  own  peculiar 
contribution  to  national  progress.  By  the  word 
peculiar  I  certainly  do  not  mean  odd  or  un¬ 
usual,  but  different.  Farmers  as  a  whole,  be- 


112  A  Christian  Program 

cause  they  live  in  a  different  environment,  de¬ 
velop  particular  traits  and  qualities.  On  the 
whole  these  traits  and  qualities  are  a  decided 
asset  rather  than  a  liability  to  the  nation.  And 
it  is  the  farmer’s  duty  to  state  his  point  of 
view,  to  exert  his  influence  in  national  affairs, 
no  matter  whether  they  immediately  affect  him 
or  not.  He  cannot  avoid  this  obligation  and 
still  retain  his  moral  citizenship.  He  must  play 
his  part  as  a  citizen  of  the  nation,  intelligently, 
sympathetically,  not  because  he  is  a  farmer, 
but  because  he  is  a  man  and  a  citizen,  and  be¬ 
cause  as  a  farmer  he  does  have  something  to 
contribute  that  other  people  do  not  have. 

(4)  Adjustments.  No  social  problem  is  ever 
solved.  What  we  call  solving  problems  is 
merely  making  adjustments  and  then  readjust¬ 
ments  as  circumstances  change.  So  with  the 
farmer.  He  must  constantly  readjust  his 
methods  of  management,  and  what  is  good  for 
to-day  may  not  be  good  for  to-morrow.  But 
he  must  also  adjust  his  views;  and  one  of  his 
best  contributions  to  the  common  good  is  to 
keep  himself  open-minded  with  respect  to  what 
is  going  on  in  the  world,  especially  among  other 
groups.  He  must  recognize  that  he  has  an 


113 


Some  Applications 

obligation  to  the  city  people  as  well  as  they 
to  him.  He  must  not  seek  his  rights  so  vig¬ 
orously  that  he  will  forget  that  it  is  his 
duty  to  understand  the  city  man’s  point  of 
view. 

3.  That  Farming  Groups  May  Develop  the  Best 
Possible  Moral  Code 

Loyalty  to  the  best  ideals.  When  we  dis¬ 
cuss  in  more  detail  the  work  of  farmers’  or¬ 
ganizations,  I  should  like  to  develop  a  few  sug¬ 
gestions  concerning  how  farmers’  organiza¬ 
tions  may  be  kept  in  line  with  the  fundamental 
principles  of  the  Christian  program.  At  this 
point,  I  wish  merely  to  call  attention  to  the 
need  of  developing  a  farming  group-morality 
or  class  ethics,  just  as  we  all  believe  in  de¬ 
veloping  an  adequate  individual  morality  or 
ethics.  A  good  statement  of  this  need  was 
made  not  long  ago  by  the  Master  of  the  Na¬ 
tional  Grange,  Mr.  S.  T.  Lowell,  in  speaking 
of  “The  Spiritual  Basis  of  the  Grange.”  He 
emphasized,  as  you  will  see,  the  fundamental 
character  of  the  idea  that  the  farmers’  organi¬ 
zations  must  be  permeated  with  loyalty,  or 
“fidelity,”  to  the  finest  religious  idealism. 


114  A  Christian  Program 

There  is  grave  danger  that  in  this  age  of 
extreme  materialism  we  shall  drift  away  from 
the  ideals  of  the  Founders,  who  were  actuated 
by  a  fine  religious  spirit,  that  crops  out  in  every 
page  of  our  ritual  and  that  finds  its  foundation 
in  the  solemn  and  binding  obligations  we  all 
take  up  on  entrance  to  the  Order.  While  the 
Founders  saw  with  clear  vision  ahead  the 
necessity  of  a  farmers’  fraternity  which  should 
protect  and  advance  the  interests  of  agriculture 
and  build  up  the  best  rural  life  possible  in 
America,  they  were  wise  enough  to  see  that 
it  must  have  more  than  this  for  a  foundation, 
and  that  an  enduring  structure  could  be  builded 
on  no  less  stable  a  corner  stone  than  that  of 
Fidelity. 

4.  That  He  May  Have  the  World  View 

I  should  like  to  quote  a  memorandum  made 
to  the  American  Peace  Commission  in  Paris, 
for  the  reason  that  this  emphasizes  in  some 
detail  a  subject  that  must  receive  constantly 
increasing  attention  from  the  farmers  of  Amer¬ 
ica.  It  is  absolutely  vital  that  the  Christian 
program  for  the  rural  community  shall  em¬ 
brace  the  world. 

The  important  interests  of  trade  and  labor 
have  already  been  recognized  in  the  plans  for 
international  cooperation.  The  equally  signifi- 


Some  Applications  115 

cant  interests  of  agriculture  have  apparently 
thus  far  not  been  considered. 

In  the  present  crisis  the  farmers  of  nearly 
all  countries  are  practically  voiceless  in  the 
councils  of  the  nations.  They  have  no  inter¬ 
national  organization,  no  world  conference,  no 
cooperating  delegations,  to  speak  their  need  and 
to  contribute  their  mind  to  solving  the  common 
problem.  Yet  no  question  before  the  Peace 
Conference  is  more  fundamental  to  world  wel¬ 
fare  than  the  rural  question.  This  is  true  be¬ 
cause  : 

(1)  An  adequate  supply  of  food  for  all  the 
people  of  the  world  is  an  essential  item  in  a 
program  of  permanent  world  peace.  A  hungry 
nation  or  even  a  hungry  group  within  a  nation 
forms  a  breeding  ground  for  discontent  and 
revolt;  a  hungry  world  means  chaos. 

(2)  This  necessary  food  supply  must  be 
furnished  by  the  farmers  of  the  world.  To¬ 
gether  with  other  soil-grown  products  that 
comprise  a  significant  portion  of  the  raw 
materials  of  industry,  this  supply  depends  upon 
the  toil,  the  effectiveness,  the  intelligence  of 
those  who  actually  work  upon  the  land. 

(3)  The  conservation  and  improvement  of 
the  soil  should  be  one  of  the  chief  concerns 
in  world  statesmanship.  No  other  natural 
resource  compares  with  the  maintenance  of 
soil  fertility  in  its  bearing  upon  the  future  of 
the  race.  But  no  fiat  of  government  nor  res¬ 
olution  of  conferences  can  insure  the  proper  use 


116  A  Christian  Program 

and  care  of  the  soil;  only  as  each  individual 
farmer  intelligently  tills  his  land  and  carefully, 
conscientiously,  husbands  its  resources  can  fu¬ 
ture  generations  as  well  as  the  present  popu¬ 
lation  of  the  nations  of  the  earth  be  assured 
their  food.  It  is  necessary  therefore  to  pro¬ 
vide  adequate  means  of  training,  stimulating, 
and  encouraging  the  masses  of  farmers  in  every 
land. 

(4)  In  all  justice,  the  working  farmer  must 
have  the  equivalent  of  a  “living  wage.”  Merely 
to  grow  a  meager  sustenance  for  himself  and 
his  family,  with  a  scant  surplus  to  sell  in  the 
market,  as  a  result  of  employing  all  the  daylight 
hours  in  hard  physical  labor,  does  not  meet  the 
terms  of  permanent  social  justice.  The  farm¬ 
ers  must  therefore  have  a  reasonable  reward; 
at  the  very  least  they  must  have  fair  play  in 
the  world’s  economic  arrangements. 

(5)  The  possession  and  use  of  the  land  by 
those  who  actually  till  it  give  guarantees  of 
public  peace,  of  intelligent  citizenship,  of  hu¬ 
man  welfare,  hardly  acquired  by  any  other 
means.  Therefore  the  land  should  be  con¬ 
trolled  by  those  who  use  it.  Access  to  owner¬ 
ship  should  be  made  easy,  land  leases  should 
favor  the  worker,  land  proprietorship  should 
be  encouraged  to  the  utmost. 

r(6)  The  farmer  and  his  family  are  of  more 
consequence  even  than  the  farm.  Education, 
both  industrial  and  cultural,  is  necessary  to  in¬ 
telligent  farming  and  to  development  of  mind. 


117 


Some  Applications 

Good  local  government  and  health  are  essential 
elements  in  a  democratic  community.  The 
farmer  must  have  these  fundamental  require¬ 
ments  of  manhood  or  become  practically  a  slave 
to  unending  toil. 

(7)  If  the  world  is  to  become  truly  and 
fully  democratic,  it  is  necessary  that  the  farm¬ 
ers  of  the  world  should  not  only  understand 
and  appreciate  democracy,  but  they  should 
fully  share  in  all  its  advantages — economic, 
political,  and  social.  More  than  four-fifths  of 
the  huge  populations  of  Russia,  India,  China, 
live  on  the  land.  Poland,  the  Czecho-Slovak 
territories,  Jugo-Slavia,  Asia  Minor,  Mesopo¬ 
tamia,  Persia,  all  are  dominantly  rural. 
Africa,  South  America,  and  Australia  are 
agricultural  rather  than  industrial  areas.  In 
the  United  States  nearly  half  the  people  live 
under  rural  conditions.  In  France  48  per  cent 
of  the  people  are  farmers.  Even  highly  urban 
nations  such  as  England  and  Belgium  are 
finding  the  farm  problem  acute  and  signifi¬ 
cant. 

(8)  A  wise  plan  of  international  coopera¬ 
tion  in  agriculture  will  provide  the  mechanism 
whereby  adequate  and  accurate  facts  may  be 
obtained,  organized,  and  interpreted;  means 
by  which  governments  may  cooperate  in  spread¬ 
ing  popular  education  in  farming  and  country 
life  and  in  training  an  effective  rural  leader¬ 
ship  ;  legislation  which  protects  the  interests  of 
the  farmer  as  a  producer,  and  simplifies  and 


118  A  Christian  Program 

cheapens  the  process  of  distribution  of  soil- 
grown  products;  and  arrangements  whereby 
the  exigencies  and  uncertainties  of  climate  and 
weather  and  the  attacks  of  plant  and  animal 
diseases  and  pests  may  be  guarded  against  so 
far  as  humanly  possible. 

(9)  No  plan  of  agricultural  cooperation  on 
an  international  basis  will  suffice,  unless  it 
encourages  to  the  utmost  the  free  organiza¬ 
tion  of  the  farmers  themselves  for  whatever 
ends  they  may  desire — economic,  social,  politi¬ 
cal.  Only  so  can  agriculture  be  fully  democ¬ 
ratized;  only  so  can  farmers  express  their  con¬ 
victions,  voice  their  experiences,  seek  an  an¬ 
swer  to  their  needs,  and  contribute  their  part 
to  the  rebuilding  of  the  world.  Organization 
for  cooperative  buying,  selling,  and  credit  es¬ 
pecially  should  be  encouraged  in  every  nation. 
The  effective  organization  of  local  farming 
communities  for  both  industrial  and  social  pur¬ 
poses  is  fundamental  to  the  larger  rural  de¬ 
mocracy. 

(10)  It  is  vital  to  the  maintenance  of  the 
world  settlement  that  an  instrumentality  be 
created  to  promote  international  cooperation 
among  those  who  till  the  soil.  Therefore, 

Resolved:  That  the  League  of  Nations 
make  provision  for  the  establishment  and  per¬ 
petual  maintenance  of  means  whereby  the 
working  farmers  of  the  world  shall  be  en¬ 
abled  to  cooperate  constantly  and  fully,  in  fur¬ 
nishing  the  world  with  food,  in  securing  just 


119 


Some  Applications 

rewards  for  their  labor,  in  improving  their 
methods  of  farming,  in  enriching  their  land, 
in  organizing  an  active  and  satisfying  com¬ 
munity  life,  and  in  maintaining  a  high  degree 
of  democratic  citizenship. 

In  the  interests  of  peace.  The  farmers  are 
a  peace-loving  folk.  As  a  rule  they  suffer  from 
war  more  than  do  any  other  classes.  Espe¬ 
cially  in  modern  warfare  not  only  are  farm 
lands  ravaged  almost  beyond  recovery,  but  be¬ 
cause  of  the  immense  numbers  of  workingmen 
needed  to  produce  the  machinery  of  war  the 
farmers  furnish  more  than  their  share  of  the 
soldiers.  May  we  not  expect  that  the  farmers 
will  become  the  great  peace  propagandists  of 
the  future? 

Need  farm  life  be  narrozv?  There  are 
those  who  will  say  that  we  are  asking  too  much 
of  the  farmer,  that  he  lives  an  isolated  life  in 
his  small  community  with  comparatively  nar¬ 
row  interests.  But  the  possibilities  of  breadth 
of  view  and  wideness  of  sympathy  on  the  part 
of  farmers  have  been  beautifully  put  by  Jay 
William  Hudson  in  the  words  of  “Abbe 
Pierre,”  who  was  really  making  a  plea  for  the 
people  of  a  farm  village  in  France: 


120  A  Christian  Program 

The  fact  is,  there  may  be  two  very  differ¬ 
ent  kinds  of  provincialism;  and  any  one  with 
any  discernment  whatever  can  readily  tell 
which  is  the  worse.  There  is  the  provincial¬ 
ism  of  outer  experience ,  on  the  one  hand — the 
provincialism  of  the  man  who  has  been  denied 
the  opportunity  of  getting  acquainted  with  the 
great  world  by  actually  roaming  over  it  and 
coming  in  contact  with  its  many-sided  life; 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  what  I  call 
the  provincialism  of  the  spirit,  which  means 
poverty,  and  littleness,  and  narrowness  of  the 
inner  life.  And  one  may  have  the  first  with¬ 
out  having  the  second,  and  the  second  is  more 
to  be  feared — far  more — than  the  first,  for 
the  first  is  superficial,  but  the  second  reaches 
to  the  deepest  currents  of  a  man’s  very  life! 
One’s  soul  may  be  indeed  narrow  and  provin¬ 
cial,  although  one  has  a  cosmopolitan  body  that 
has  traveled  far  and  wide;  and  one  may  have 
a  body  whose  eyes  have  never  seen  beyond  the 
dawns  and  sunsets  of  his  native  valley,  and 
yet  have  a  soul  whose  home  is  no  less  than 
the  infinite  universe!  The  cosmopolitanism  of 
the  body,  and  the  cosmopolitanism  of  the  spirit 
— take  your  choice !  Happy  is  he  who  can  have 
both ! 

5.  That  He  May  Strengthen  the  Inner  Life 
“The  soul, 

Forever  and  forever — longer  than  soil  is 


Some  Applications  121 

brown  and  solid — longer  than  water  ebbs 
and  flows/’ 

(Walt  Whitman.) 

The  farmer  deals  in  steadfast  fashion  with 
the  brown  and  solid  soil  of  which  Walt  Whit¬ 
man  sang.  The  farmer’s  feet  are  planted  on 
the  earth.  Let  Liberty  Hyde  Bailey  again  in¬ 
terpret  : 

“For  he  shall  build  on  the  good  stout  earth 
That  he  takes  from  the  hand  of  God, 

And  grip  his  place  with  a  free  man’s  girth 
And  shall  strike  his  fires  from  the  clod.” 

The  farmer  is  fully  conscious  of  the  soul 
that  goes  on  “forever  and  forever.”  He  is 
witness,  as  each  recurring  springtime  brings 
the  renewal  of  the  myriad  forms  of  life,  of 
the  miracle  of  resurrection.  He  holds  com¬ 
munion  with  nature  in  her  various  moods.  He 
is  himself  a  creator  of  life,  in  that  he  releases 
the  forces  that  makes  life.  He  sows  his  seed 
for  the  harvest.  His  cattle  multiply  and  his 
fields  yield  their  increase.  Nature  with  all  her 
manifestations  and  her  beauties  is  his  constant 
companion.  To  other  people  this  contact  with 
nature  is  but  an  occasional  thing;  with  the 


122  A  Christian  Program 

farmer  it  is  a  daily  affair.  The  manipulation 
of  cultivated  plants  and  the  handling  and  care 
of  domestic  animals  work  their  magic  upon  the 
spirit  of  the  man  who  deals  with  them.  He 
has  so  much  power  with  them.  He  can  do  so 
much  for  them.  They  yield  their  beneficence 
to  him  largely  in  proportion  to  the  intelligence 
and  kindness  which  he  bestows  upon  them. 

God  speaks  in  many  voices  through  the 
ministries  of  nature.  The  marvelous  tints  of 
the  changing  year,  the  varying  lights  of  day 
and  night,  the  altered  moods  of  storm  and 
calm,  the  grades  of  warmth  and  chill  in  the 
revolving  seasons,  the  many  sounds  of  animate 
life,  all  are  ways  in  which  the  life  of  God  dis¬ 
closes  itself  to  our  soul.  To  read  His  world 
with  responsive  heart  is  like  a  fresh  revelation 
of  His  Word.  ( The  Daily  Altar.) 

He  may  then  learn  the  faith  and  the  peace 
of  the  prophet.  Undaunted  by  the  devastating 
storm;  full  of  faith  in  the  midst  of  an  imper¬ 
fect  world,  he  can  still  say: 

“Though  the  fig-tree  bears  no  fruit, 

And  there  be  no  vintage  on  the  vines, 
Though  the  olive  harvest  fails 
And  the  fields  produce  no  food, 


123 


Some  Applications 

Though  the  flock  be  cut  off  from  the  fold, 
And  there  be  no  herd  in  the  stalls, 

Yet  I  will  exult  in  Jehovah.” 

We  want  justice  for  our  farmers;  we  want 
prosperity  for  them;  we  want  comforts  for 
them.  But,  oh,  my  friends,  we  want  for  them, 
as  they  want  for  themselves,  something  far 
more  valuable  than  justice,  far  more  important 
than  prosperity,  far  better  than  comfort.  We 
want  for  them  a  chance  to  grow  and  every 
help  and  incentive  to  grow  into  the  best  and 
biggest  men  they  can  be.  We  want  them  to 
have  the  power  to  live  and  love  either  in  pov¬ 
erty  or  in  wealth.  We  want  them  strong 
enough  to  do  either.  We  want  them  to  pos¬ 
sess  an  inner  life  of  peace  and  joy,  no  matter 
what  storms  may  rage  without. 


Chapter  Four 

THE  ORGANS  OF  CHRISTIAN  RURAL 

PROGRESS 


Chapter  Four 

THE  ORGANS  OF  CHRISTIAN  RURAL 

PROGRESS 

The  Christian  spirit  will  find  an  outlet  in 
those  social  institutions  and  agencies  that  men 
have  organized.  An  institution  is  a  group  of 
people  who  for  certain  definite  ends  agree  to 
act  together.  If  people  are  to  exhibit  the 
Christian  spirit  in  their  multifarious  dealings 
with  one  another,  they  can  do  it  mainly  as  these 
so-called  social  institutions  or  agencies  act  in 
a  Christian  way  and  get  results  that  are  es¬ 
sentially  Christian. 

It  is  just  as  important  that  schools  and  col¬ 
leges  shall  minister  to  a  Christian  civilization 
as  it  is  that  the  church  shall  do  this.  We  can¬ 
not  have  a  pagan  system  of  education  in  a  civi¬ 
lization  that  we  are  trying  to  make  fully  Chris¬ 
tian.  I  do  not  argue  here  for  propaganda  con¬ 
cerning  the  teaching  of  religion  in  our  public 
schools,  and  certainly  I  do  not  want  to  rouse 

sectarian  differences  of  opinion  on  this  point. 

127 


128  A  Christian  Program 

But  we  have  grown  too  much  accustomed  to 
think  that  nothing  is  Christian  unless  it  bears 
the  form  and  is  carried  by  the  ritual  of  the 
Christian  Church.  What  we  want  in  all  our 
life  is  an  exhibition  of  the  Christian  spirit  and 
a  permeation  of  group  activities  of  all  sorts 
with  the  Christian  ideal.  We  cannot  here  de¬ 
tail  the  ways  in  which  our  public  education  in 
America  may  be  made  fully  Christian,  is  in¬ 
deed  already  to  a  large  extent  Christian.  For 
there  are  two  great  organs  of  society  that  must 
be  discussed,  the  farmers’  organization  and 
the  Church.  However,  before  passing  on  to 
those  items,  let  me  mention  two  other  matters 
of  some  importance. 

i.  Farmers  need  their  own  institutions; 
otherwise  the  farmers  become  merely  the  fringe 
of  the  urban  groups.  The  country  church  is 
profoundly  affected  by  the  advent  of  the  auto¬ 
mobile,  and  it  has  even  been  assumed  in  some 
quarters  that  the  country  people  will  desert  the 
church  of  the  open  country  and  attend,  if  they 
attend  at  all,  the  church  of  the  neighboring  vil¬ 
lage  or  city.  If  this  is  in  any  large  sense  a 
sure  tendency,  it  means  not  alone  the  downfall 
of  the  country  church,  but  the  practical  anni- 


129 


Organs  of  Progress 

hilation  of  religious  leadership  in  the  country. 
It  is  all  but  impossible  for  urban  institutions 
as  such  fully  to  serve  the  countryside. 

This  is  not  to  assert  that  churches  and 
schools  and  granges  and  other  rural  institu¬ 
tions  may  not  be  located  in  the  village  or  the 
small  town.  On  the  contrary,  it  would  be  a 
wholesome  thing  if  our  rural  villages  could 
tie  themselves  up  intimately  with  the  surround¬ 
ing  countryside,  and  if  villagers  and  farmers 
could  unite  in  maintaining  local  institutions. 
These  villages  and  small  cities  are  so  thor¬ 
oughly  dependent  upon  the  economic  welfare 
of  the  surrounding  farmers  that  politically  and 
socially  they  should  work  together ;  in  fact,  the 
villages  should  look  countryward  rather  than 
cityward  for  their  obligations,  their  interests, 
and  their  alliances.  But  the  moment  the  coun¬ 
try  people  are  obliged  to  rely  upon  institutions 
that  are  essentially  urban-minded,  that  moment 
will  begin  rural  disintegration. 

Why  shouldn’t  the  great  fraternal  organi¬ 
zations  that  have  chapters  in  the  farming  areas 
develop  a  distinct  rural  community  program? 
I  refer  to  such  bodies  as  the  Masons,  the  Odd 
Fellows.  Are  there  not  many  things  in  the 


130  A  Christian  Program 

purposes  of  these  organizations  that  can  truly 
be  called  Christian?  Would  they  not  agree 
on  a  very  large  proportion  of  the  items  in  a 
Christian  program  that  we  have  discussed? 
Here  is  a  power  that  perhaps  has  not  yet  been 
fully  mobilized  on  behalf  of  the  upbuilding  of 
the  countryside.  If  these  organizations  would 
deliberately  undertake  to  cooperate,  in  their 
own  ways  and  by  their  own  means,  but  really 
to  cooperate  in  our  program,  they  could  be  a 
tremendous  asset  with  reference  to  the  per¬ 
manent  upbuilding  of  the  best  in  our  country 
life. 

The  Economic  Struggle  the  Great  Issue  in  a  Chris¬ 
tian  Program 

2.  If  we  are  to  have  a  Christian  civilization, 
those  associations  of  men  that  deal  directly  and 
immediately  with  their  economic  interests  must 
play  a  vital  part.  The  battle  ground  between 
the  non-Christian  and  the  Christian  forces  lies 
in  the  question  of  a  fair  distribution  of  wealth. 
If  we  cannot  Christianize  industry,  industry 
will  paganize  us.  So  with  agriculture.  The 
struggle  for  a  square  deal  for  the  farmers  is 
the  immediate  and  pressing  issue.  This  is 


131 


Organs  of  Progress 

partly  because  justice  to  a  great  class  of  pro¬ 
ducers  like  the  farmers  is  in  itself  a  Christian 
thing;  partly  because  it  is  a  hopeless  task  to 
try  to  build  adequate  social  institutions,  as  for 
example  the  Church,  on  a  poor  economic  foun¬ 
dation;  partly  because  it  is  extremely  difficult 
to  feed  human  souls  with  the  bread  of  life  until 
at  least  their  minimum  physical  hunger  is  sat¬ 
isfied.  It  is  equally  true  that  the  economic  ob¬ 
ligations  of  farmers  to  society  are  to  be  rec¬ 
ognized  and  fostered.  We  must  develop  an 
economic  program  for  the  farmers  that  is  es¬ 
sentially  Christian,  or  we  have  lost  the  battle 
for  making  rural  civilization  thoroughly  Chris¬ 
tian. 

From  the  Christian  point  of  view  the  situa¬ 
tion  is  rather  fortunate,  for  the  following 
reasons : 

In  the  first  place  the  argument  that  farmers 
are  not  getting  their  fair  share  in  the  distri¬ 
bution  of  their  products  is  so  obviously  true 
that  one  may  throw  himself  unreservedly  into 
the  fight  for  better  things  for  the  farmer. 

Moreover,  the  great  farmer  organizations 
have  not  yet  gained  sufficient  power  so  that  they 
are  tempted  to  use  their  power  unfairly,  and 


132  A  Christian  Program 

owing  to  the  isolation  of  individual  farmers, 
and  for  some  other  reasons  that  we  cannot 
here  go  into,  it  is  doubtful  if  the  agrarian 
movement  in  America  is  ever  likely  to  develop 
a  class  power  that  will  be  inimical  to  the  just 
interests  of  other  classes. 

An  observation  of  Mr.  Bernard  M.  Baruch 
is  of  value  concerning  the  motives  of  the  lead¬ 
ers  of  the  present  farmer  movements :  “I  have 
met  many  of  the  leaders  of  the  new  farm 
movement,  and  I  testify,  in  all  sincerity,  that 
they  are  endeavoring  to  deal  with  their  prob¬ 
lems,  not  as  promoters  of  a  narrow  class  in¬ 
terest,  not  as  exploiters  of  the  hapless  con¬ 
sumer,  not  as  merciless  monopolists,  but  as 
honest  men  bent  on  the  improvement  of  the 
common  weal.” 

THAT  FARMERS’  ORGANIZATIONS  MAY  BE 

CHRISTIAN 

i.  The  farmers  should  ask  for  fair  play, 
never  for  special  privilege.  Without  question 
that  is  the  general  mood  of  farmers.  There 
are  always  two  dangers,  however.  One  danger 
is  that  when  a  great  mass  of  the  population 
becomes  thoroughly  organized  and  realizes  its 


133 


Organs  of  Progress 

strength,  almost  unconsciously  it  may  ask  for 
things  because  it  can  get  them  and  because  it 
is  to  its  advantage,  without  weighing  too  care¬ 
fully  the  effe.ct  upon  other  people.  In  other 
words,  it  practically  attempts  to  gain  special 
privilege.  The  other  danger  is  that  there  may 
be  an  overweighing  of  the  attitudes  and  influ¬ 
ence  of  other  groups,  and  a  consequent  inclina¬ 
tion  to  get  some  advantage  just  because  “the 
other  fellow’’  has  been  getting  the  advantage. 
This  is  one  of  the  most  insidious  forms  of 
moral  temptation  for  individuals  or  groups: 
“They  all  do  it,”  or  “The  other  fellow  does  it.” 
It  is  temptation  to  pay  injustice  in  the  same 
coin,  to  justify  an  act  because  some  one  else 
does  it;  this  is  all  natural  and  human,  but  un¬ 
christian,  and  in  the  long  run  gets  us  nowhere ; 
it  simply  perpetuates  a  moral  wrong. 

2.  The  farmers  should  have  broad  sympathy 
for  other  groups,  especially  for  labor.  There 
has  never  been,  except  in  rare  instances,  a 
warm  cordiality  between  organized  agriculture 
and  organized  labor.  Numerous  efforts  have 
been  made  to  bring  them  into  a  common  plat¬ 
form.  At  the  present  moment  the  farmers  are 
probably  as  critical  of  labor  as  is  any  other 


134  A  Christian  Program 

group.  They  have  a  feeling  that  labor  has 
over-reached  itself.  Principally  they  feel  that 
the  high  prices  which  the  farmers  have  to  pay 
for  manufactured  products  and  for  transporta¬ 
tion  are  due  to  what  they  regard  as  the  ex¬ 
actions  of  labor  for  high  wages.  The  insist¬ 
ence  of  labor  upon  the  shorter  day,  and  par¬ 
ticularly  those  occasional  demands  that  call 
for  such  extreme  terms  as  a  five-  or  six-hour 
day,  not  only  seem  absurd  to  the  farmers  who 
during  the  growing  season  of  crops  work  ex¬ 
tremely  long  hours,  but  they  feel  them  to  be 
impracticable  from  the  economic  point  of  view. 
A  basis  for  common  action  between  labor  and 
agriculture  was  recently  suggested  in  an  edi¬ 
torial  in  The  New  Republic:  “Farmer  and 
laborer  could  stand  together  on  an  economic 
program  including  living  prices  for  agricul¬ 
tural  products,  living  wages  for  labor,  the 
elimination  of  waste  and  of  unemployment.” 
What  I  am  pleading  for,  however,  is  an  at¬ 
titude  of  sympathy  for  labor.  Farmers  should 
remember  that  labor  has  been  compelled  to  or¬ 
ganize  in  order  to  get  ordinary  justice  and 
minimum  freedom. 


135 


Organs  of  Progress 

The  sympathy  of  the  farmers  ought  to  go 
out  to  other  groups  as  well.  The  sharp  antag¬ 
onisms  between  farmers  and  the  merchants  of 
the  village,  bankers,  and  other  similar  groups 
is  of  course  sometimes  explained  either  by  dis¬ 
honest  practice  or  more  often  by  social  con¬ 
descension.  But  that  is  no  reason  from  the 
Christian  point  of  view  why  the  class  feeling 
should  run  so  high.  The  farmers  should  seek 
to  know  the  truth  about  all  these  relationships. 
They  should  get  acquainted  with  these  groups. 
They  should  insist  upon  a  square  deal  all 
around.  They  should  make  every  effort  to 
be  fair  themselves  in  attitude  as  well  as  to 
ask  consideration  for  their  own  interests. 

3.  The  farmers’  organizations  should  em¬ 
phasize  local  community  consciousness,  pro¬ 
grams,  and  conscience.  We  will  have  need  to 
dwell  upon  this  point  later.  There  is  a  grow¬ 
ing  conviction  that  rural  progress  is  to  be  de¬ 
termined  largely,  and  in  the  last  analysis 
wholly,  in  accordance  with  the  success  with 
which  the  local  farming  community  solves  its 
problems.  So,  if  we  want  to  have  a  Christian 
program  for  our  rural  affairs,  we  must  not 


136  A  Christian  Program 

only  make  but  carry  out  a  Christian  program 
for  the  local  group  or  community. 

4.  Organizations  should  urge  maximum 
efficiency  of  individual  farmers  and  of  farmers 
as  a  class.  We  have  already  referred  to  the 
fact  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  the  morality 
of  efficiency.  The  farmers  cannot  expect  com¬ 
plete  sympathy  for  their  efforts  to  secure  jus¬ 
tice  in  the  distribution  of  products  unless  they 
themselves  exercise  every  possible  effort  to  pro¬ 
duce  as  cheaply  as  possible. 

We  come  here  to  one  of  the  most  difficult 
moral  problems  in  the  whole  realm  of  our  dis¬ 
cussion.  It  is  what  might  be  called  the  com¬ 
petition  of  efficiency.  In  a  huge  country  like 
the  United  States,  there  is  inevitable  compe¬ 
tition  between  groups  of  farmers.  New  Eng¬ 
land  has  been  perhaps  the  chief  sufferer  in  this 
respect.  A  hundred  years  ago  it  began  to  feel 
the  competition  of  the  new  lands  west  of  the 
Hudson,  and  even  to-day  the  New  England 
farmer  finds  himself  in  competition  with  farm¬ 
ers  of  every  corner  of  the  United  States.  A 
certain  measure  of  this  sort  of  competition  will 
remain.  Whenever  there  is  a  surplus  of  a 
product,  the  resulting  low  price  is  due  in  reality 


137 


Organs  of  Progress 

to  competition  among  farmers.  It  is  the  part 
of  wisdom  and  statesmanship  to  reduce  this 
competition  to  as  low  terms  as  possible.  Take, 
for  example,  the  matter  of  potatoes.  If  Aroo¬ 
stook  County,  Maine,  by  reason  of  advantages 
of  soil  and  climate,  traditional  experience  and 
skill,  or  other  factors,  can  produce  potatoes 
more  cheaply  than  can  the  farmers  of  northern 
Wisconsin,  nobody  can  gainsay  the  right  of 
the  Maine  farmers  to  do  that  very  thing.  And 
they  ought  not  to  be  penalized  for  doing  it. 
In  other  words,  every  effort  should  be  made 
to  encourage  acquiescence  in  the  normal  eco¬ 
nomic  law  that  things  should  be  produced 
where  they  can  be  produced  to  best  advantage, 
and  farmers  should  be  discouraged  from  at¬ 
tempting  to  produce  in  any  region  those  things 
that  can  better  be  produced  somewhere  else. 

5.  Organizations  should  mobilize  the  best 
farmers’  sentiment  on  behalf  of  the  greatest 
national  good.  From  a  Christian  point  of 
view,  in  order  to  carry  out  the  spirit  of  obli¬ 
gation  or  duty,  organized  agriculture  will  seek 
not  merely  its  rights,  but  more  than  all  will 
seek  to  lead  the  entire  group  to  do  its  duty 
patriotically,  that  is,  to  work  for  the  good  of 


138  A  Christian  Program 

the  whole  country.  Organized  agriculture  will 
assert  its  rights,  but  it  will  even  more  proclaim 
and  urge  and  endeavor  to  realize  its  duties. 

6.  Organizations  should  try  to  avoid  the 
dangers  of  the  agrarian  movement.  In  gen¬ 
eral  in  the  matter  of  organized  agriculture 
there  are  the  dangers  that  always  come  in  or¬ 
ganizations  of  great  masses — class  conscious¬ 
ness,  insistence  upon  rights  rather  than  duties 
when  power  is  gained,  temptation  to  use  it  for 
self-interest  and  even  recklessly.  The  struggle 
for  right  too  often  breeds  antagonisms  and 
prejudices  that  last  far  beyond  the  occasion 
and  prevent  the  group  not  only  from  doing  its 
full  duty  to  society  as  a  whole,  but  also  its 
own  best  self-realization. 

Christianizing  Agricultural  Cooperation 

The  means  by  which  the  farmers  hope  to 
secure  what  they  believe  to  be  a  square  deal 
is  mainly  in  the  cooperative  movement.  The 
cooperative  idea,  in  its  essence,  is  thoroughly 
Christian.  It  represents  a  group,  sinking  in¬ 
dividual  advantage  and  personal  prejudice,  and 
working  together  for  the  common  interest  of 
the  group.  It  is  a  very  difficult  thing  to 


Organs  of  Progress  139 

achieve.  It  has  taken  the  American  farmer  a 
long  time  to  see  its  necessity.  During  the  past 
ten  years,  driven  by  necessity  it  may  be  said, 
the  cooperative  movement  in  America  has 
gained  huge  proportions.  The  problem  is  not 
yet  solved ;  there  are  difficulties  still  in  the  way ; 
there  will  be  some  serious  wrecks  probably 
before  matters  are  fully  worked  out;  but  the 
gain  has  been  enormous.  Let  me  urge  every 
country  pastor  to  procure  and  read  and  in¬ 
wardly  digest  a  pamphlet  issued  by  the  Pres¬ 
byterian  Board  of  Home  Missions  consisting 
of  articles  originally  appearing  in  Home  Lands. 
The  document  is  entitled  “Pace  Makers  in 
Farmers’  Cooperation.”  This  cooperative 
movement  is  not  only  the  most  promising  thing 
in  sight  for  securing  substantial  justice  to  the 
farmers,  but  it  is  the  strongest  movement  for 
carrying  the  Christian  spirit  into  agricultural 
business.  Of  course  the  idea  of  cooperation 
may  be  prostituted.  It  is  conceivable  that  great 
cooperative  systems  of  producers  could  “hold 
up”  the  consumers.  It  is  quite  possible  that  a 
well-organized  group  of  producers,  learning  to 
bargain  collectively  with  consumers,  might  de¬ 
mand  more  than  their  share,  might  try  to 


140  A  Christian  Program 

charge  “all  that  the  traffic  will  bear,”  might 
even  fight  other  groups  of  producers.  But 
real  cooperation  contemplates  none  of  these 
things,  and  true  cooperation  therefore  may  be 
said  to  be  essentially  Christian. 

I  am  aware  that  many  will  say  that  effective 
agricultural  cooperation  is  based  on  self-inter¬ 
est.  This  is  a  crucial  question  from  the  moral 
and  Christian  point  of  view.  There  is  a  good 
deal  of  preaching  about  cooperation  that  makes 
it  out  to  be  a  method  of  reducing  costs  of  dis¬ 
tribution  so  that  both  producers  and  consumers 
will  benefit,  when  in  actual  practice  it  often 
becomes  nothing  more  or  less  than  a  new  way 
to  power.  That  there  can  be  a  moral  and  re¬ 
ligious  element  in  cooperation  is  evidenced  in 
much  European  experience  where  before  the 
war  cooperation  was  almost  in  itself  a  religion. 
Many  of  the  leaders  were  quite  willing  to 
argue  that  even  though  the  farmers  themselves 
might  not  in  some  cases  gain  much  profit  from 
cooperation,  the  habit  of  working  together,  the 
development  of  common  interest,  the  give  and 
take  of  adjusting  rights  and  duties  were  in 
themselves  worth  while.  Of  course  it  would 
be  sheer  hypocrisy  to  urge  cooperation  on  an 


141 


Organs  of  Progress 

altruistic  basis  alone,  assuming  that  self-in¬ 
terest  is  not  advanced  thereby.  The  real  merit 
in  cooperation  from  the  moral  point  of  view 
is  that  it  balances  self-interest  and  the  social 
interest;  and  that  is  precisely  what  the  Chris¬ 
tian  program  demands. 

Furthermore,  we  must  subscribe  either  to  the 
power  idea  or  to  the  cooperative  idea.  If  we 
subscribe  to  the  power  idea,  then  let  might 
make  right;  let  the  farmer  “get  his”  if  he 
can;  but  remember  that  he  must  not  complain 
if  he  does  not  secure  his  share.  If  we  sub¬ 
scribe  to  cooperation,  then  we  must  stoop  to 
conquer.  We  must  cooperate  to  the  end.  We 
must  insist  that  cooperation  shall  not  be  one¬ 
sided.  Cooperation  never  is  one-sided.  Co¬ 
operation  makes  each  do  his  share,  makes  each 
perform  his  duty,  and  consequently  each 
secures  his  rights.  It  is  not  unmoral  or  unfair 
for  the  cooperator  therefore  to  insist  that  his 
fellow  cooperators  really  cooperate.  Neverthe¬ 
less,  if  we  try  to  make  cooperation  merely  an¬ 
other  name  for  organized  power,  then  we  lose 
at  the  very  start. 

The  farmer  cannot  complain,  if  he  subscribes 
to  the  idea  of  power,  should  he  sometimes  be 


142  A  Christian  Program 

beaten.  In  a  contest  for  power,  somebody  has 
to  lose.  That  is  in  contrast  to  cooperation,  for 
in  cooperation  everybody  gains  because  he  gets 
his  share. 

It  is  obvious  that  we  live  in  a  world  of  strug¬ 
gle,  that  competition  is  inevitable.  The  strug¬ 
gle  for  a  living  is  real,  but  after  all  we  soon 
find  that  there  is  a  higher  law  and  a  greater 
principle,  namely,  that  of  cooperation,  the 
struggle  for  the  life  of  others,  mutual  aid. 
We  find  that  together  we  can  do  things  even 
for  ourselves  that  we  cannot  do  alone.  But 
true  cooperation  is  love  in  action.  It  is  the 
practical  method  of  rendering  service.  In  its 
application  it  embraces  community  loyalty,  the 
balancing  of  rights  and  duties,  the  sense  of 
working  together  with  God.  It  is  the  incen¬ 
tive  for  community  building.  It  is  applied 
brotherhood. 

THE  CENTRAL  PLACE  OF  THE  CHURCH  IN  A 
RURAL  CHRISTIAN  PROGRAM 

All  through  these  lectures,  we  have  been 
making  an  effort  to  distinguish  between  the 
process  of  Christianizing  civilization,  and  the 


143 


Organs  of  Progress 

assumption  that  Christianity  is  to  be  confined 
to  the  Church.  We  must  now  emphasize  the 
place  of  the  Church  in  formulating  and  devel¬ 
oping  the  Christian  program,  in  teaching  men 
the  Christian  way  of  life,  and  in  inspiring 
them  to  continued  and  steadfast  consecration 
to  the  Christian  ideal.  Unless  the  Church  car¬ 
ries  Christianity  as  its  freight  it  is  not  likely 
to  be  carried.  While  it  is  true  that  we  seek 
to  make  all  human  institutions  Christian  and 
all  human  relationships  Christian,  there  must 
be  a  great  central  dynamo  of  Christian  power 
that  will  constantly  send  out  its  stimulating 
currents  into  all  parts  of  human  society,  and 
that  dynamo  is  the  Church — or  a  substitute 
for  it — and  what  substitute  can  there  be? 

William  Adams  Brown  says  that  the  task 
of  the  Church  is  “to  mobilize  all  the  resources 
of  the  Church  for  the  Christianizing  of  the 
country  as  a  whole.”  But  the  rural  half  of 
America  cannot  be  Christianized  by  the 
churches  of  the  urban  half,  only  by  the  rural 
churches  themselves. 

The  clear  task  of  the  country  church  then 
is  to  mobilize  Christian  sentiment,  ideals,  and 
programs;  to  lead  in  formulating  and  carrying 


144  A  Christian  Program 

out  a  Christian  program  for  the  rural  com¬ 
munity. 

Is  the  country  church  fully  ready  for  this 
great  commission?  I  confess  that  I  sometimes 
doubt  it.  Let  me  make  a  list  of  some  of  the 
difficulties  that  arise  out  of  what  might  per¬ 
haps  be  fairly  termed  the  unpreparedness  of 
the  country  church  for  the  task  we  are  here 
assigning  to  her.  In  making  this  assertion  of 
relative  unpreparedness  of  the  country  church, 
I  am  by  no  means  unmindful  of  her  strength 
and  power  and  genuine  service.  I  do,  however, 
challenge  her  to  a  larger  view  of  her  task  and 
a  more  united  endeavor  to  fulfill  it. 

I  should  like  to  put  this  delicate  but  impor¬ 
tant  matter  in  the  form  of  a  few  queries : 

1.  Can  we  not,  without  sacrificing  a  proper 
loyalty  to  our  denominations,  get  rid  of  the 
excess  of  the  sectarian  prejudices  and  rivalries 
that  we  must  confess  do  arise,  and  do  stand 
in  the  way  of  the  Church  achieving  a  united 
front  against  all  the  non-Christian  forces  and 
tendencies  of  our  time? 

2.  Is  it  not  possible  to  mobilize  the  rural 
churches  in  such  fashion  that  we  can  fairly 
speak  of  the  “American  Country  Church,,? 


145 


Organs  of  Progress 

At  present,  we  have  really  no  such  thing  as 
a  country  church.  We  have  tens  of  thousands 
of  country  churches ;  we  have  country  churches 
of  certain  denominations.  But  we  have  at 
present  no  group  so  far  as  I  know  that  can 
be  said  to  represent  thoroughly  and  adequately 
and  efficiently  the  country  church  movement, 
or  any  body  or  even  any  group  that  can  speak 
for  the  country  church  as  a  whole,  to  say  noth¬ 
ing  of  a  group  that  can  actually  organize  com¬ 
mon  opinion  and  allegiance. 

3.  May  we  not  magnify  the  great  objectives 
of  the  country  church,  and  perhaps  make  less 
of  the  glory  or  credit  of  the  institution  itself  ? 
It  seems  to  me  I  have  discerned  in  our  dis¬ 
cussion  of  country  church  advancement,  an  in¬ 
clination  to  stress  organization,  machinery, 
method,  rather  than  the  message.  What  we 
need  first  of  all  is  a  Christian  program  for 
rural  society;  then  we  may  fairly  ask  our¬ 
selves,  “What  part  will  the  church  take  in 
carrying  out  the  program  ?”  and  “What  is  the 
Christian  message  for  the  countryside  ?”  Let 
the  church  then  make  its  message  so  broad,  so 
comprehensive,  so  direct,  so  practical,  if  you 
please,  and  yet  at  the  same  time  so  idealistic, 


146  A  Christian  Program 

so  spiritual,  that  for  all  reasons  it  wins  the 
allegiance  of  the  multitude  to  its  main  end  of 
making  a  Christian  world. 

4.  Last  year,  when  in  China,  I  found  that 
apparently  the  high-minded  Chinese  believes 
that  the  moral  teachings  which  have  been 
handed  down  to  him  for  twenty-five  hundred 
years,  and  which  are  wrought  into  the  very 
fiber  of  the  Chinese  character,  are  not  only 
sound  but  efficacious  in  the  making  of  charac¬ 
ter.  Now  the  Christian  appeal  to  this  Chinese 
must  be  a  persuasion  that  there  is  a  more  effi¬ 
cacious  means  to  character,  that  there  is  in  fact 
a  motive  power  tied  up  in  the  person  of  Jesus 
that  will  drive  the  human  spirit  faster  and  far¬ 
ther  toward  the  goal  of  completeness  than  will 
the  maxims  of  the  Chinese  ethical  system,  no 
matter  how  sound  and  good  they  are.  And 
that  is  precisely  what  happens  in  the  case  of 
an  intelligent  Chinese  who  becomes  a  Chris¬ 
tian.  He  does  not  care  for  our  dogmas,  he 
does  not  care  for  our  sects.  He  cares  might¬ 
ily  for  results,  and  he  is  persuaded  that  in  Jesus 
he  finds  the  absorbing  incentive  in  character 
building;  in  other  words,  he  finds  the  way,  the 
truth,  and  the  life. 


Organs  of  Progress  147 

And  I  have  wondered  if  we  American  Chris¬ 
tians  could  not  begin  to  compose  our  differences 
of  religious  views,  or  at  least  to  determine  that 
these  differences  shall  not  stand  in  the  way 
of  the  heartiest  cooperation  in  the  work  of  mak¬ 
ing  life  truly  Christian.  In  the  best  sense  of 
the  word  “belief,”  Christian  belief  must  pre¬ 
cede  a  Christian  life,  but  the  type  of  belief  that 
should  precede  life  is  belief  in  the  ideal;  for 
our  purposes,  belief  in  the  Christian  ideal,  be¬ 
lief  in  the  way  of  life  that  Jesus  taught  and 
lived.  We  have  liked  to  stress  the  other  as¬ 
pect  of  belief;  that  is,  belief  in  explanations, 
explanations  of  the  idea  and  methods  of  God, 
explanations  of  the  marvel  of  the  person  and 
work  of  Christ,  explanations  of  the  psychology 
of  the  relationships  between  men  and  their 
Maker.  And  we  have  constantly  confused 
these  types  of  belief;  or  rather  we  have  been 
inclined  to  substitute  belief  in  explanations  for 
belief  in  the  spiritual  ideals,  as  the  tests  of  dis- 
cipleship.  As  one  of  our  religious  leaders  has 
so  well  said,  speaking  of  the  miracle  of  Jesus 
walking  on  the  water  as  a  symbol  of  the  value 
and  effect  of  prayer:  “I  am  persuaded  that 
there  are  many  people  who  believe  confidently 


148  A  Christian  Program 

that  this  event  was  physically  true  who  fail 
utterly  to  gain  the  spiritual  meaning  of  the 
incident ;  and  I  am  equally  persuaded  that  there 
are  others  who  do  not  believe  that  the  physical 
event  occurred  who  grasp  a  spiritual  meaning 
in  the  story  which  goes  to  the  very  root  of  the 
idea  of  prayer/’ 

I  never  cease  to  be  deeply  moved  by  the  chal¬ 
lenge  of  “Ian  MacLaren” : 

No  church  since  the  early  centuries  has  had 
the  courage  to  formulate  an  ethical  creed,  for 
even  those  bodies  of  Christians  which  have  no 
written  theological  creeds,  yet  have  implicit 
affirmations  or  denials  of  doctrine  as  their 
basis.  Imagine  a  body  of  Christians  who 
should  take  their  stand  on  the  Sermon  of  Jesus, 
and  conceive  their  creed  on  His  lines.  Imagine 
how  it  would  read,  “I  believe  in  the  Fatherhood 
of  God;  I  believe  in  the  words  of  Jesus;  I 
believe  in  the  clean  heart ;  I  believe  in  the  serv¬ 
ice  of  love;  I  believe  in  the  unworldly  life; 
I  believe  in  the  Beatitudes;  I  promise  to  trust 
God  and  follow  Christ,  to  forgive  my  enemies 
and  to  seek  after  the  righteousness  of  God.” 
Could  any  form  of  words  be  more  elevated, 
more  persuasive,  more  alluring?  Do  they  not 
thrill  the  heart  and  strengthen  the  conscience? 
Liberty  of  thought  is  allowed;  liberty  of  sin¬ 
ning  is  alone  denied.  Who  would  refuse  to 


149 


Organs  of  Progress 

sign  this  creed?  They  would  come  from  the 
east  and  the  west,  and  the  north  and  the  south, 
to  its  call,  and  even  they  who  would  hesitate 
to  bind  themselves  to  a  crusade  so  arduous 
would  admire  it,  and  long  to  be  worthy.  Does 
one  say  this  is  too  ideal,  too  unpractical,  too 
quixotic?  That  no  church  could  stand  and 
work  on  such  a  basis?  For  three  too  short 
years  the  Church  of  Christ  had  none  else,  and 
it  was  by  holy  living,  and  not  by  any  metaphys¬ 
ical  subtleties,  the  Primitive  Church  lived,  and 
suffered,  and  conquered. 


Let  me  hasten  to  say  that  such  a  creed  does 
not  by  any  means  deny  the  value  or  the  need 
of  explanations.  The  human  mind  will  not  rest 
content  without  explanations.  But  let  us  put 
our  main  emphasis  upon  the  cultivation  of 
Jesus’  spirit  in  the  hearts  of  all  men  and  in 
all  their  relations  to  life.  Even  permanent 
disagreements  with  respect  to  explanations  of 
all  the  phenomena  of  the  universe  should  not 
divide  the  disciples  of  Christ.  They  would 
still  be  all  one  in  seeking  the  Christian  way 
of  life  for  all  individual  and  collective  effort. 

Let  us  urge  people  to  fullness  of  life,  to 
participate  in  many  interests,  to  a  wide  range 
of  the  spirit.  If  young  people,  for  example, 


150  A  Christian  Program 

can  be  made  ambitious  for  the  best  things,  if 
they  can  be  shown  that  true  religion  is  not  a 
matter  of  the  long  face,  but  of  the  happy  life, 
that  it  is  not  cutting  off,  but  adding  to  the  zest 
of  living,  we  have  made  a  tremendous  gain. 
We  have  taught  a  truer  Christianity. 

What  is  the  special  contribution  that  the 
Church  is  peculiarly  in  a  position  to  make  at 
this  point?  It  seems  to  me  that  it  is  in  stim¬ 
ulating  ideals,  developing  the  spirit  of  service, 
emphasizing  the  duty  of  personal  growth, 
urging  breadth  of  mental  training  and  wideness 
and  sympathy*  of  personal  views.  In  other 
words,  it  is  giving  divine  sanction  for  the  finest, 
broadest  human  life.  If  we  can  put  the  right 
spirit  into  a  man,  we  do  not  need  to  worry 
about  his  habits. 

I  cannot  emphasize  too  much  this  task  of  the 
Church  to  stimulate  men  and  women  and  to 
give  them  the  right  spirit  and  point  of  view. 
It  so  transcends  all  narrower  and  smaller  con¬ 
ceptions  of  the  work  of  the  Church  and  what 
it  should  ask  of  its  members. 

5.  Is  there  not  a  certain  lack  in  the  educa¬ 
tional  aspect  of  the  work  of  the  Church?  I 
sometimes  think  the  teaching  of  the  Church  is 


151 


Organs  of  Progress 

done  too  exclusively  by  exhortation,  not  suffi¬ 
ciently  by  study  and  discussion.  To  discuss 
this  query  fully  would  involve  us  in  many  de¬ 
tails  of  preparation  of  pastors,  Sunday  school 
policies,  and  the  like.  It  is  something  for  us 
to  consider  most  seriously. 

6.  Do  we  make  enough  of  the  Church  as  a 
fraternity?  Probably  you  have  sometimes 
heard  men  who  belong  to  some  secret  organi¬ 
zation  say  that  the  reason  they  liked  it  was 
because  of  the  sense  of  fellowship,  of  com¬ 
radeship,  of  common  personal  ground  on  which 
to  stand.  Is  this  merely  an  excuse  for  not 
tying  up  with  the  Church,  or  is  it  a  reflection 
upon  the  Church?  Or  are  we  to  consider  that 
it  is  impossible  for  a  church  made  up  of  men, 
women,  youth,  children,  of  various  grades  of 
wealth,  of  education,  of  social  contacts,  to 
really  be  a  fellowship,  a  fraternity?  Doubtless 
there  are  thousands  of  small  churches  partic¬ 
ularly,  and  very  likely  many  of  these  are  in 
the  country,  in  which  the  fraternal  or  brother¬ 
hood  spirit  is  prominent.  And  yet  is  it  an  idle 
suggestion  that  the  Church  shall  emphasize 
more  than  it  ever  has  before  the  fact  that  it 
ought  to  be,  fundamentally  and  humanly  speak- 


152  A  Christian  Program 

% 

ing,  a  Christian  brotherhood  in  all  that  term 
implies  ? 

7.  It  is  a  truism  that  the  Church  itself  must 
be  thoroughly  Christian  before  it  can  make  the 
world  Christian.  The  Church  must  itself  be 
tolerant  before  it  can  secure  tolerance  among 
classes  or  races.  The  Church  must  try -to  be 
as  democratic,  as  fraternal,  as  cooperative,  as 
forgiving,  as  honest,  as  kind,  as  broad,  as  it 
asks  others  to  be. 

A  Few  Practical  Questions 

1.  How  can  the  farm  family  life  be  made 
to  contribute  more  fully  to  the  definite  re¬ 
ligious  instruction  of  children  and  youth? 

2.  Can  the  rural  public  school,  under  condi¬ 
tions  that  exist  in  America,  foster  the  religious 
attitude  and  help  children  and  youth  to  gain  at 
least  an  insight  into  the  problems  of  life  in 
their  moral  aspect? 

3.  Can  the  Church  school,  or  the  Sunday 
school,  be  so  organized  in  the  country,  that 
it  can  be  effective  in  a  real  training  of  a  large 
share  of  children  and  youth  in  what  might  be 
called  a  system  of  religious  instruction;  that 


153 


Organs  of  Progress 

is,  a  system  by  which  the  average  boy  and  the 
average  girl,  when  they  grow  out  of  their 
’teens,  shall  have  some  interest  in  the  idea  of 
a  Christian  program  for  the  rural  community 
and  some  grasp  of  the  fundamental  ideas  that 
underlie  such  a  conception? 

4.  How  can  the  country  church  itself,  pre¬ 
sumably  through  its  pastor,  keep  before  these 
younger  people  the  main  ideas  that  underlie 
the  task  of  Christianizing  modern  industry, 
modern  agriculture,  and  modern  life  generally  ? 

5.  How  can  the  Church  assist  in  so  stimu¬ 
lating  the  activities  of  so-called  secular  organi¬ 
zations  that  they  will  actually,  even  if  not 
avowedly,  participate  in  the  Christian  pro¬ 
gram? 

6.  How  can  church  worship  be  made  to  con¬ 
tribute  more  fully  and  more  definitely  to  the  ■ 
strengthening  of  the  inner  life? 

7.  How  can  prayer  be  made  more  real  and 
vital  and  more  an  actual  habit  of  more  people  ? 

8.  Is  it  possible  to  get  adults  to  give  some 
time  to  the  systematic  consideration,  through 
study  and  reading,  of  the  problems  that  we  are 
discussing  in  these  lectures  ?  Can  we  organize 


154  A  Christian  Program 

discussion  groups  in  the  country  on  such  a  per¬ 
manent  basis  that  they  will  become  real  cen¬ 
ters  of  education  in  this  field? 

9.  How  can  we  enlist  preachers  and  how 
can  we  train  them,  who  will  make  the  country 
church  work  a  life  work,  and  who  will  build 
their  service  on  the  lines  of  seeking  to  help  the 
farm  people  to  make  all  parts  of  their  life 
Christian? 

Rural  Churches  and  Agricultural  Missions 

The  responsibility  of  the  rural  churches  goes 
even  further  than  the  American  rural  com¬ 
munity.  Is  there  any  reason  why  the  rural 
churches  should  not  take  upon  themselves  the 
main  responsibility  for  agricultural  missions, 
that  is,  for  Christianizing  foreign  rural  com¬ 
munities?  This,  too,  may  seem  like  a  counsel 
of  perfection,  wholly  impossible  and  quixotic, 
especially  in  view  of  the  evident  need  of  con¬ 
tributions  to  much  country  church  work  from 
the  city  churches.  However,  most  country 
communities  could  support  one  good  church, 
and  many  of  them  could  in  addition  make  a 
moderate  contribution  to  foreign  missions. 
There  are  6,000,000  farm  families  in  America. 


155 


Organs  of  Progress 

If  they  contributed  to  agricultural  missions  at 
the  rate  of  io  cents  per  family  per  year,  more 
than  half  a  million  dollars  would  be  realized. 
Urban  interests  could  give  as  much  more,  and 
this  million  dollars  a  year  would  be  sufficient 
for  an  ample  program  for  American  support 
of  agricultural  missions  for  a  long  time  to 
come. 

The  Country  Preacher  as  Leader 

In  the  old  days  the  minister  was  in  many 
respects  the  most  important  man  in  the  com¬ 
munity.  He  ought  to  be  so  now.  It  is  more 
difficult  for  the  preacher  to  be  this  leader  than 
it  used  to  be.  Education  is  more  widely  dif¬ 
fused.  There  is  scarcely  a  community  in 
America  that  does  not  possess  at  least  one  col¬ 
lege  graduate  in  its  membership,  entirely  apart 
from  the  teacher  or  preacher;  the  preacher 
finds  in  some  communities  a  group  of  men  and 
women  quite  as  well  educated  as  he  is.  While 
he  cannot  dominate  therefore  by  reason  of 
amount  or  quantity  of  education,  he  can  lead 
because  of  his  special  function;  for  his  task  is 
to  show  men  the  moral  and  spiritual  bearing 
of  each  thought  and  word  and  deed  of  their 


156  A  Christian  Program 

lives;  in  the  home,  in  the  community,  in  busi¬ 
ness,  in  class  struggles,  in  international  rela¬ 
tionships.  In  other  words,  he  is  to  preach  prac¬ 
tical  righteousness,  personal  and  collective. 
Now  this  imposes  a  tremendous  responsibility, 
but  it  also  gives  a  unique  opportunity.  In  this 
field  he  has  ever  his  own  way.  He  should  have 
at  his  command  as  assistants,  many  laymen, 
men  and  women,  who  are  quite  as  conscious 
as  he  of  the  need  of  spiritual  interpretations 
of  life.  He  is  the  man  who  must  have  the 
vision  of  the  prophet  to  interpret  life  in  terms 
of  character,  in  terms  of  the  spirit. 

To  be  such  an  interpreter,  he  must  have 
some  knowledge  of  the  problems  which  the 
farmers  have  to  deal  with,  so  that  in  his  prep¬ 
aration  he  should  have  training  and  experi¬ 
ences  that  give  him  understanding  of  the  fun¬ 
damental  technical,  scientific,  economic,  politi¬ 
cal,  and  social  problems  of  agriculture.  He 
does  not  need  to  be  an  expert  in  any  of  these. 
He  simply  must  understand  what  is  involved 
in  them  and  then  he  can  fairly  ask  the  ques¬ 
tion,  “Is  this  solution  a  righteous  one?  Is  this 
solution  really  going  to  give  the  farmers  their 
chance  for  manhood  and  womanhood?  Is  it 


157 


Organs  of  Progress 

going  to  make  for  character  and  peace  ?” 
These  are  his  questions. 

And  is  this  leadership  not  enough  to  chal¬ 
lenge  the  ambition  of  any  man  to  stand  on  the 
mountain  top,  to  survey  the  great  wide  field 
of  agricultural  endeavor,  to  watch  the  battle 
as  the  armies  deploy  on  the  plain  below,  and 
then  to  say,  “This  is  right,  and  this  is  wrong. 
This  will  succeed  and  this  will  fail”;  not  be¬ 
cause  he  is  an  expert  in  military  affairs,  but 
because  he  knows  the  justice  of  the  cause? 

And  then  of  course  the  minister  should  be 
a  relatively  permanent  fixture  in  the  rural  com¬ 
munity. 

The  Technical  and  the  Moral 

Objectors  to  the  modern  movement  for 
preaching  the  social  gospel  continue  to  assert 
that  the  Church  must  not  try  to  run  the 
world’s  business,  that  the  preacher  must 
“preach  the  simple  gospel”  or  must  “preach 
religion,”  that  the  preacher  should  not  “give 
out  essays  on  economics,”  that  “the  preacher 
cannot  be  expected  to  solve  the  world’s  busi¬ 
ness  problems.” 

That  comments  of  this  sort  are  constantly 


158  A  Christian  Program 

made  and  indeed  that  they  represent  a  very 
widespread  opinion  is  partly  a  criticism  of  the 
Church  itself.  That  is  to  say,  the  business  of 
the  Church  is  to  map  the  Christian  way  of  life 
for  society.  The  Church  should  have  made  it 
clear  that  this  task  imposes  on  it  the  necessity 
of  preaching  about  anything  that  affects  the 
life  of  mankind  on  its  moral  and  spiritual  sides. 

Nevertheless,  there  is  a  very  real  and  diffi¬ 
cult  question  involved,  and  the  phase  of  it  that 
I  want  to  discuss  for  a  moment  has  to  do  with 
the  extent  to  which  the  country  preacher  must 
understand  the  problems  of  agriculture.  It  in¬ 
volves  also  the  extent  to  which  the  agricultural 
specialists  of  any  sort  shall  try  to  influence  the 
Christian  point  of  view. 

So  far  as  the  preacher  is  concerned,  no  one 
would  argue  that  the  preacher  should  regard 
himself  or  be  regarded  by  anybody  else  as  a 
technical  expert.  In  individual  cases  he  may 
know  a  great  deal  about  the  details  of  farm¬ 
ing,  and  he  may  be  invaluable  in  some  com¬ 
munities  in  helping  to  work  out  business  prob¬ 
lems.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  in  the  great 
cooperative  movements  in  Europe,  the  pastors 
rendered  an  indispensable  part  as  treasurers 


159 


Organs  of  Progress 

of  the  little  credit  banks,  or  even  as  managers 
of  cooperative  societies.  This  was  of  course 
because  there  was  nobody  else  to  do  it  at  the 
time.  On  the  other  hand,  it  would  seem  to  be 
rather  difficult  for  the  preacher  to  make  clear 
to  his  people  just  how  business  can  be  made 
Christian  unless  he  knows  something  about  the 
way  in  which  that  business  has  to  be  done.  I 
should  suppose  that  otherwise  he  would  rather 
be  beating  the  air.  I  think  the  average  man 
in  business  and  the  average  farmer  want  to 
do  the  fair  thing  and  are,  if  you  please,  trying 
to  be  Christian,  but  the  great  difficulty  is  how 
really  to  apply  religious  teaching  in  the  every¬ 
day  work  of  the  world  as  it  is  organized  at 
present. 

On  the  other  hand  if  the  laymen  who  are 
the  leaders,  either  on  the  scientific  or  on  the 
practical  side,  in  the  great  work  of  agriculture, 
do  not  have  clear-cut  views  as  to  a  Christian 
program,  it  would  hardly  be  expected  that  they 
would  function  fully  in  carrying  out  the  pro¬ 
gram. 

Is  there  any  better  counsel  than  that  we 
shall  hope  that  the  agricultural  specialist  will 
be  a  Christian  man  understanding  the  Chris- 


160  A  Christian  Program 

tian  principles,  that  the  country  preacher  will 
be  a  specialist  in  religion  but  will  carry  his 
specialty  far  beyond  rhetoric  or  emotion  or  gen¬ 
eralities,  will  study  the  problems  of  the  people 
of  the  countryside  as  they  have  to  meet  those 
problems  from  day  to  day  in  their  work  and 
life,  in  order  that  he  may  help  them  interpret 
religion  in  its  application  to  this  work  and  life; 
in  other  words,  that  he  may  help  them  follow 
a  Christian  program  of  life  and  labor  ? 

The  Challenge  to  the  Church 

You  may  disagree  with  every  item  in  the 
diagnosis  of  the  country  church  situation  that 
has  been  mentioned,  and  in  the  entire  philoso¬ 
phy  of  its  place,  mission,  and  method  implied 
in  all  that  has  been  said.  But  I  am  sure  that 
you  will  agree  that  the  need  of  having  and 
vitalizing  a  Christian  program  for  our  farm¬ 
ing  communities  is  a  distinct  and  serious  chal¬ 
lenge  to  the  American  country  church. 


Chapter  Five 

CHRISTIANIZING  THE  RURAL 
COMMUNITY 


Chapter  Five 

CHRISTIANIZING  THE  RURAL 
COMMUNITY 

The  Christian  program  to  be  effective  must 
permeate  all  aspects  of  life,  all  institutions,  all 
geographical  areas,  all  movements.  As  a  work¬ 
ing  basis  for  readjustment  it  must  especially 
develop  in  the  local  social  groups.  Otherwise 
it  will  not  be  really  effective.  If  we  cannot 
have  a  Christian  local  rural  community,  we 
cannot  have  a  Christian  rural  civilization.  We 
may  fool  ourselves  into  measuring  civilization 
by  what  we  see  in  certain  literature,  or  ten¬ 
dencies,  or  attitudes  among  those  whom  we  are 
pleased  to  call  the  people  at  the  top;  but  there 
is  such  a  thing  as  mass  values,  and  in  the  long 
run  a  civilization  is  measured  by  the  quality 
of  the  entire  people.  What  goes  on  in  the  local 
community  is  the  vital  test  of  a  Christian  pro¬ 
gram.  Therefore,  the  task  of  Christianizing 
the  local  rural  community  is  the  very  heart  of 
our  problem. 


163 


164  A  Christian  Program 

The  Significance  of  the  Community  Idea 

The  community  idea  is  well  expressed  by 
some  sentences  in  the  “declaration  of  purposes” 
of  the  National  Grange,  written  fifty  years 
ago.  “We  propose  meeting  together,  talking 
together,  buying  together,  selling  together,  and, 
in  general,  acting  together  for  our  mutual  pro¬ 
tection  and  advancement.”  The  spirit  of  the 
quotation,  extended  to  a  neighborhood  of  farm¬ 
ers,  is  the  community-spirit.  Togetherness. 
rather  than  aloneness,  is  the  community  idea. 
The  Grange,  even  at  its  best,  is  a  bit  exclu¬ 
sive;  it  picks  its  membership.  A  true  com¬ 
munity  includes  the  interest  of  every  one  living 
in  the  community — old  and  young,  native  and 
foreigner,  wise  and  foolish.  The  community 
idea  assumes  that  every  soul  has  in  it  some 
degree  of  divinity,  that  all  are  children  of  our 
heavenly  Father,  and  that  “all  ye  are  brethren.” 
It  is  based  on  the  principle  of  the  rights  of 
all,  even  the  humblest,  combined  with  the  duty 
to  neighbors  that  is  the  obligation  of  all,  even 
the  strongest.  But  it  assumes  more  than  that. 
It  holds  that  the  unit  of  interest  is  the  common 
interest  of  all,  not  the  individual  interests  of 
many.  There  is  a  vast  difference  between  en- 


Christianizing  the  Community  165 

deavoring  to  compromise  the  personal  desires 
of  a  hundred  individuals,  each  seeking  chiefly 
his  personal  welfare,  and  trying  to  bring  the 
separate  items  of  personal  welfare  into  one 
program  of  common  advancement — much  the 
same  difference  that  exists  between  bringing 
separate  ovals  of  iron  into  a  pile,  and  welding 
the  separate  links  into  a  chain.  One  is  ac¬ 
commodation;  the  other  is  brotherhood.  A 
favorite  figure  of  speech  used  by  advocates  of 
cooperation  is  the  scientific  fact  that  a  group 
of  one  hundred  small  wires,  woven  into  a  cable, 
have  far  more  strength  in  that  form  than  if 
left  hanging  side  by  side,  or  even  twisted  into 
a  loose  bundle.  But  often  the  bottom  lesson 
is  unlearned — the  real  secret  of  power,  that  out 
of  a  hundred  wires  we  have  made  a  cable ,  not 
merely  a  bundle  of  contiguous  individual  wires, 
The  core  of  the  community  idea,  then,  as 
applied  to  rural  life,  is  that  we  must  make  the 
community — as  a  unit,  an  entity,  a  thing — the 
point  of  departure  in  all  our  thinking  about  the 
rural  problem,  and  the  direct  aim  of  all  or¬ 
ganized  efforts  for  improvement  or  re-direc¬ 
tion.  The  community  idea  is  the  one  funda¬ 
mental  concept  in  the  philosophy  of  rural  civ- 


166  A  Christian  Program 

ilization  that  ties  theory  to  practice,  that  gives 
concreteness  to  organized  effort,  that  binds 
personal  ambition  to  large  human  welfare,  that 
justifies  institutional  endeavor,  that  clarifies 
thinking,  and  that  strengthens  the  arm  for  high 
endeavor.  We  are  passing  through  a  marvel¬ 
ous  arousing  of  interest  in  rural  matters.  We 
are  just  now  in  the  turbulent  rapids  of  new 
ideas,  schemes,  and  advices.  The  passage  to 
the  more  placid,  deeper-flowing  waters  of  true 
advancement  lies  close  to  the  shore  of  this  con¬ 
cept — that  the  building  of  adequate  local  farm 
communities  is  the  main  task  in  erecting  an 
adequate  rural  civilization.  Here  is  the  real 
goal  of  all  rural  effort,  the  inner  kernel  of  a 
sane  country  life  movement,  the  moving  slogan 
of  the  campaign  for  rural  progress  that  must 
be  waged  by  the  present  generation. 

We  may  say  that  the  local  farm  community 
comprises  the  smallest  group  of  farmers  that 
can  have  their  own  social  institutions.  Inves¬ 
tigations  have  of  course  shown  that  such  com¬ 
munities  do  not  absolutely  exist,  that  there  is, 
as  a  matter  of  fact  in  even  small  geographic 
areas,  an  economic  group,  a  church  group,  a 
school  group,  and  so  on  through  the  list.  More 


Christianizing  the  Community  167 

and  more,  however,  the  tendency  is  to  remap 
as  it  were  our  farm  population  on  the  basis 
of  true  communities.  The  community  there¬ 
fore  differs  from  the  neighborhood,  which  is 
merely  a  group  of  families  living  near  together. 
A  true  community  must  be  in  large  measure 
self-sufficing;  it  must  be  a  little  world;  it  is 
in  reality  a  family  of  families  and  has  much 
of  the  integrity  and  unity  of  the  family  idea. 

The  Scope  of  the  Community  Idea 

It  is  a  bit  unfortunate  that  the  community 
idea  has  been  propagated  to  quite  an  extent  by 
agencies  primarily  urban  in  their  point  of  view 
and  experience  and  on  the  basis  of  the  service 
of  a  particular  institution,  namely,  the  school. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  school  should 
be  a  community  center  and  render  distinct  com¬ 
munity  service,  but  this  by  no  means  compasses 
the  community  idea  nor  indicates  its  possibili¬ 
ties.  The  community  idea  is  as  broad  as  the 
interests  of  the  farming  people,  and  it  is  quite 
as  applicable  to  production,  to  distribution,  to 
credit,  to  many  forms  of  economic  service  as 
it  is  to  the  social  and  ideal  elements  of  society. 
In  order  to  make  this  significant  fact  somewhat 


168  A  Christian  Program 

clear,  let  us  make  a  very  brief  list  of  possi¬ 
bilities  in  the  application  of  the  community 
idea.  This  is  not  a  fanciful  list,  for  as  a  mat¬ 
ter  of  fact  here  and  there  in  this  country  and 
in  other  countries  every  item  in  the  list  is  be¬ 
ing  practically  demonstrated  to-day. 

Some  of  the  Possibilities  of  the  Community  Idea 

1.  Production.  It  is  doubtful  if  American 
farmers  will  attempt  cooperative  farming  in 
the  sense  of  pooling  capital  and  labor  in  one 
piece  of  land.  But  it  is  perfectly  practicable 
for  them  to  pool  their  individual  farm  plans 
into  a  community  plan.  A  Southern  journalist 
has  indicated  to  me  his  belief  that  cotton  grow¬ 
ing  in  the  South  would  be  very  greatly  advan¬ 
taged  if,  in  each  local  community,  the  cotton 
farmers  would  act  as  a  unit  concerning  all  the 
problems  of  production,  such  as  seed  selection, 
use  of  improved  strains,  development  of  meth¬ 
ods  of  cultivation.  Many  farm  communities 
have  agreed  upon  a  certain  breed  of  stock  or 
upon  certain  types  of  crops  that  they  would 
grow — and  are  carrying  out  the  agreement. 

2.  Distribution.  The  agricultural  coopera¬ 
tive  movement  in  America  has  at  last  discov- 


Christianizing  the  Community  169 

ered  the  vital  importance  of  building  itself  on 
a  commodity  basis,  that  is,  the  cotton  farmers 
must  market  cotton,  the  wheat  farmers,  wheat, 
and  the  whole  must  be  organized  on  a  large 
enough  scale  to  influence  marketing  conditions. 
But  the  wiser  leaders  of  this  movement  are 
quite  aware  that  organization  at  the  top  alone 
is  futile,  and  that  the  permanent  success  of  the 
cooperative  movement  depends  upon  a  founda¬ 
tion  solidly  built  of  successful  local  marketing 
groups,  that  is,  local  community  groups.  This 
does  not  mean,  however,  that  the  entire  com¬ 
munity  will  unite  to  sell  everything;  thus  far 
it  seems  necessary  that  the  local  individuals 
interested  in  a  particular  commodity  shall  work 
together.  It  will  follow,  however,  when  the 
different  local  community  groups  are  well  at 
work  that  they  will  find  so  many  things  in 
common  that  there  will  eventually  be  to  all  in¬ 
tents  and  purposes  a  local  community  market¬ 
ing  group. 

3.  Credit .  We  are  proceeding  in  America 
to  assist  the  farmers,  both  by  long  term  and 
short  term  credit,  by  a  great  overhead  organi¬ 
zation  fostered  by  the  government.  This  is 
unquestionably  the  right  procedure;  but  here 


170  A  Christian  Program 

again  the  greatest  efficiency  cannot  possibly  re¬ 
sult  until  the  collective  credit  of  the  local  com¬ 
munity  is  made  available  for  the  individual 
members  of  that  community.  The  American 
farmer  is  so  individualistic  that  it  may  take  a 
long  time  before  this  can  be  brought  about  in 
fullest  measure,  but  it  must  come,  because  it 
is  absolutely  sound,  economically  and  psycho¬ 
logically. 

4.  Collective  Service .  A  good  illustration 
is  the  cooperative  laundry.  Why  should  not 
the  housewife  be  relieved  of  this  form  of 
drudgery?  The  possibilities  here  are  wide¬ 
spread.  If  farmers  do  not  want  to  grow  their 
own  fruits  and  vegetables,  why  not  agree  to 
buy  fruits  and  vegetables  from  some  one  in 
the  community  who  will  make  that  his  sole 
business  ?  In  some  regions,  community  slaugh¬ 
terhouses  can  probably  furnish  a  constant  sup¬ 
ply  of  fresh  meat  at  lower  costs  than  the 
butcher.  There  is  almost  no  limit  to  the  service 
that  the  members  of  the  farm  community  can 
render  themselves  simply  by  intelligently 
planned  collective  effort. 

The  significance  of  the  local  community  in 
stabilizing  nation-wide  cooperative  efforts  is 


Christianizing  the  Community  171 

brought  out  in  a  quotation  from  a  personal 
letter  written  by  one  of  the  best  informed 
European  workers  in  the  cooperative  move¬ 
ment.  He  is  speaking  of  a  region  which  he 
recently  visited. 

The  conclusion  that  I  have  come  to  since 
being  over  there  is  that  the  reason  why  there 
is  so  much  disloyalty  in  connection  with  the 
different  cooperative  undertakings  is  that  the 
farmers  and  others  associated  with  them  have 
not  been  trained  into  the  value  of  community 
organization.  I  have  tried  all  I  could  to  get 
the  lesson  imprinted  in  their  minds — that  the 
building  of  a  successful  economic  agriculture 
must  be  on  the  foundation  of  mutual  trust. 
Everywhere  I  went  I  found  ignorance  amongst 
members  of  the  different  societies,  and  a  lack 
of  faith  in  the  principles  of  cooperation. 

The  Community  and  the  Local  Institutions 

It  is,  of  course,  in  the  realm  of  institutional 
work  that  we  find  some  of  the  most  suggestive 
and  stimulating  aspects  of  the  community  pro¬ 
gram.  Again  let  us  list  a  few  of  these  possi¬ 
bilities. 

i.  The  Family.  At  first  thought  it  may 
seem  rather  theoretical  to  suggest  that  the  fam¬ 
ily  life  has  any  special  relationship  to  the  com- 


172  A  Christian  Program 

munity  as  a  whole,  but  that  relationship  is 
really  most  vital.  It  is  important  that  the  fam¬ 
ily  shall  not  live  unto  itself  alone,  but  that  it 
shall  be  deeply  concerned  with  all  that  goes 
on  in  the  community.  We  have  not  yet  begun 
to  discover  all  the  ways  in  which  the  farm  fam¬ 
ily  may  function  in  building  the  community  or 
ways  in  which  the  farm  family  may  ask  the 
community  to  assist  it  in  its  work  as  a  primary 
social  unit. 

2.  The  School.  Far  too  much  we  still  think 
of  the  school  as  a  place  for  young  children  to 
get  the  rudiments  of  what  we  call  an  education 
in  order  that  they  may  personally  and  individ¬ 
ually  benefit  and  profit  by  it.  That  is  an  in¬ 
adequate  conception  of  the  school.  It  is  really 
an  institution  for  the  purpose  of  serving  the 
community  as  a  center  of  well-directed  think¬ 
ing.  It  will  of  course  give  the  young  the  tools 
of  the  mind.  But  it  will,  if  true  to  its  purpose, - 
inspire  them  to  use  those  tools  for  the  benefit 
of  the  community  and  of  society  at  large.  But 
eventually  the  school  will  go  even  farther  than 
that,  and  will  be  a  center  of  adult  education 
through  which  people  all  through  life  will  be 
stimulated  to  maintain  a  certain  measure  of 


Christianizing  the  Community  173 

study  and  thinking  concerning  the  entire  range 
of  their  interests,  not  only  local  and  community 
interests,  but  world  interests.  The  school  then 
will  be  a  true  community  institution,  not  merely 
because  it  is  owned  and  managed  by  the  com¬ 
munity,  but  because  it  has  the  community  out¬ 
look  and  is  constantly  endeavoring  to  serve  the 
community  as  a  center  of  adult  interest. 

3.  Farmers'  Associations.  Farmers’  organi¬ 
zations  do  have  to  quite  an  extent  the  com¬ 
munity  purpose  in  point  of  view,  although  in 
some  cases  they  restrict  their  membership 
rather  unfortunately.  And  in  other  cases  they 
appeal  for  cooperation  on  the  basis  chiefly  of 
the  individual  benefit  that  will  accrue  through 
cooperation.  This  of  course  is  legitimate,  but 
it  is  not  complete.  The  farmers’  organization 
will  function  fully  only  when  it  looks  at  its 
work  from  the  standpoint  of  the  effort  to  ben¬ 
efit  the  entire  community.  The  farmers’  or¬ 
ganization  therefore  will  tend  to  become  the 
economic  center  of  the  community. 

4.  The  Church .  We  might  as  well  frankly 
confess  our  sins  and  say  that  the  Church  has 
been  too  exclusively  concerned  with  its  future 
as  an  institution.  Of  course,  I  suppose,  all 


174  A  Christian  Program 

Church  members,  when  they  stop  to  think  about 
it,  really  believe  that  the  mission  of  the  Church 
is  to  Christianize  the  world.  But  in  actual 
practice  this  great  ideal  degenerates  too  fre¬ 
quently  into  a  denominational  or  sectarian  am¬ 
bition  rather  than  a  passion  for  service  to  all. 
Here  again  the  community  idea  comes  really 
to  rescue  the  Church,  for  the  local  church 
should  seek  not  to  build  itself  merely  for  the 
sake  of  itself,  but  in  order  that  it  may  be  of 
use  to  all — in  other  words,  that  it  may  secure 
a  Christian  program  for  the  community.  We 
must  remember  that  the  only  way  to  be  serv¬ 
iceable  is  to  be  serviceable.  The  building  up 
of  the  Church  is  incidental;  the  main  thing  is 
the  service  of  the  Church  to  the  entire  com¬ 
munity. 

A  Community  Program 

The  community  idea  involves  the  making  of 
a  program  for  the  community.  There  must  be 
a  study  of  the  resources  of  the  community, 
physical  and  human  resources,  a  study  of  the 
needs  of  the  community ;  and  then  on  the  basis 
of  these  considerations  a  plan  of  improvements, 
for  that  is  all  a  program  amounts  to.  There 


Christianizing  the  Community  175 

ought  to  be  no  such  thing  as  a  perfectly  con¬ 
tented  community.  A  community  should  be 
just  as  ambitious  as  an  individual,  always 
anxious  to  improve,  grow,  and  progress,  to  en¬ 
large  its  idea  of  what  life  really  means.  A 
community  program  will  grow  out  of  the  ideas 
and  thinking  and  cooperation  of  the  people 
themselves,  but  it  may  be  vastly  aided  and  stim¬ 
ulated  by  outside  agencies  and  by  contact  with 
other  communities. 

The  Community  Organization 

The  ideal  organization  of  the  local  rural 
community  is  one  that  actually  brings  together 
all  the  people  of  the  community  into  occasional 
meetings  for  the  purpose  of  discussing  the 
needs  of  the  community,  eventually  hearing  re¬ 
ports  on  the  various  items  of  community  prog¬ 
ress,  and  determining  further  policies  for  the 
community. 

This  in  turn  involves  some  form  of  commit¬ 
tee  or  committees  which  will  really  make 
studies  of  community  needs  and  serve  as  lead¬ 
ers  in  getting  results. 

There  is  no  one  formula  with  respect  to  de¬ 
tails.  The  community  club  idea  has  been  very 


176  A  Christian  Program 

popular  in  many  parts  of  our  country,  espe¬ 
cially  where  there  are  not  very  many  local 
organizations.  In  those  communities  that  al¬ 
ready  have  a  good  many  associated  efforts,  the 
community  council,  made  up  of  representatives 
of  these  different  agencies,  seems  to  work 
pretty  well. 

The  main  thing  is  to  make  sure  that  the 
people  of  the  community,  through  whatever 
committees  or  groups  or  leaders  seem  to  be  best 
for  that  community,  are  considering  commu¬ 
nity  needs,  community  possibilities,  and  com¬ 
munity  methods. 

A  state-wide  “community  life  campaign/’ 
carried  out  by  the  Virginia  State  Council  of 
Rural  Agencies,  illustrates  splendidly  a  well- 
planned  effort  to  organize  local  communities, 
secure  the  cooperation  of  all  agencies,  and  pro¬ 
mote  community  welfare: 

The  aims  and  purposes  of  this  campaign 
are  ( i )  to  arouse  the  people  to  a  sense  of  com¬ 
munity  responsibility  and  to  organize  for  self- 
help;  (2)  to  promote  an  intelligent  public  sen¬ 
timent  by  making  known  the  best  that  is  being 
done  for  rural  improvement  in  Virginia  and 
the  Nation,  by  putting  struggling  communities 
in  touch  with  sources  of  help  and  information; 


Christianizing  the  Community  177 

and  (3)  to  bring  about  a  closer  and  more  effec¬ 
tive  cooperation  of  all  existing  agencies  so  that 
the  point  of  view  of  the  community  will  always 
be  the  point  of  view  of  each. 

The  home,  the  church,  the  school,  the  farm, 
health,  transportation,  and  recreation  will  be 
carefully  discussed  and  studied,  and  efforts  will 
be  put  forth  in  every  county  to  develop  progres¬ 
sive  programs  for  the  development  of  com¬ 
munity  life.  To  this  end  the  support  and  in¬ 
terest  of  all  teachers,  ministers,  school  authori¬ 
ties,  health  workers,  the  various  farmers’  and 
citizens’  organizations,  the  Red  Cross,  the  edi¬ 
tors  of  all  newspapers,  home  and  county  dem¬ 
onstration  and  agricultural  agents,  and  all  or¬ 
ganizations  engaged  in  State-wide  rural  work, 
are  being  enlisted. 

In  West  Virginia,  remarkable  results  have 
accrued  from  the  use  of  “community  score- 
cards.”  Competition  in  community-building 
has  resulted.  Best  of  all,  the  community-idea 
has  become  vital  in  the  thinking  of  the  farmers. 


Leadership 

It  goes  without  saying  that  a  program  of 
this  sort  requires  good  leadership  and,  if  I  may 
say  so,  it  requires  Christian  leadership.  What 
I  mean  is  that  the  local  leaders  must  have  the 


178  A  Christian  Program 

spirit  of  service;  they  must  seek  the  good  of 
the  community;  they  must  be  willing  to  coop¬ 
erate  with  one  another;  they  must  not  be  too 
jealous  of  prerogative  or  too  anxious  for  per¬ 
sonal  credit.  In  almost  any  farming  com¬ 
munity,  if  a  group  of  six  or  eight  local  leaders 
can  work  together  year  after  year  in  peace  and 
harmony  for  the  benefit  of  the  entire  com¬ 
munity,  we  may  be  almost  certain  that  the  bal¬ 
ance  of  the  community  will  fall  in  line. 

The  Place  of  the  Church 

If  this  local  community  program  is  to  be 
Christian,  it  should  have  the  hearty  support 
of  the  local  church  or  churches  because  it  is 
the  local  church  that  ought  to  be  able  to  fur¬ 
nish  the  ideas  and  the  incentive  and  the  ex¬ 
ample  in  the  matter  of  trying  to  make  that  com¬ 
munity  as  nearly  an  ideal  community  as  it  is 
possible  under  human  limitations. 

And  think  for  a  moment  what  the  Church 
has  at  stake.  If  we  are  really  seeking  to  usher 
in  the  Kingdom  of  God,  we  shall  wish  to  ren¬ 
der  every  possible  aid  to  the  development  of 
the  local  community,  because  there  is  no  other 
way  to  bring  in  the  Kingdom  of  God.  If  the 


Christianizing  the  Community  179 

natural  units  of  our  rural  society  are  not 
Christianized,  the  society  as  a  whole  cannot 
possibly  be  Christian. 

Community  Loyalty 

I  quote  a  pregnant  sentence  from  the  book 
“Recent  Developments  in  European  Thought” : 

And  there  is  now  a  greater  and  stronger 
demand  among  us  for  a  further  advance,  above 
all  for  making  every  citizen  not  merely  or  even 
primarily  a  voting  unity,  but  a  consciously  ac¬ 
tive,  consciously  cooperative,  member  of  the 
community. 

We  have  come  to  one  of  the  most  profound 
statements  that  can  be  imagined  with  reference 
to  the  future  of  rural  civilization  in  America. 
In  China,  we  are  told,  the  great  difficulty  is 
that  there  is  no  spirit  of  nationality,  no  patriot¬ 
ism,  that  the  individual  is  not  conscious  of  the 
need  of  loyalty  to  the  country  as  a  whole.  His 
loyalties  are  all  local,  primarily  to  the  family 
and  then  to  the  clan,  the  guild,  and  the  village. 
We  of  the  Western  world  have  emphasized 
loyalty  to  the  nation,  and  by  the  same  token 
we  have  under-emphasized  the  need  of  partici¬ 
pation  in  a  community  development.  We  want 


180  A  Christian  Program 

every  American  farmer  to  be  “consciously  ac¬ 
tive,  consciously  cooperative”  in  all  good  words 
and  works  that  affect  the  welfare  of  his  neigh¬ 
bors,  of  his  local  community.  Its  institutions 
are  his  institutions ;  its  success  his  success ;  its 
opportunities  his  opportunities.  Says  Joseph 
Lee,  under  the  title  “The  Community:  Maker 
of  Men”:  “The  community  will  call  on  every 
citizen  to  serve  its  purposes  because  it  knows 
that  they  are  also  his.  It  will  call  as  with  a 
trumpet  blast  of  peace,  but  it  is  to  the  still 
small  voice  within — to  the  great  purpose  as  it 
is  whispered  to  the  man  himself — that  it  will 
speak.  .  .  .” 

But  some  say  in  any  such  scheme  of  or¬ 
ganized  or  collective  effort  you  are  submerging 
the  individual ;  the  glory  of  America  is  that  she 
has  given  the  individual  his  chance.  But  times 
have  changed,  and  I  say  to  you  that  the  only 
way  now  for  the  individual  to  get  his  chance 
is  by  working  with  and  for  his  fellows.  The 
old  liberty  of  the  individual  must  give  way  to 
that  new  freedom  for  the  individual  that  can 
come  only  by  cooperative  effort.  And  the  great 
point  about  it  all  is  that  the  practical  working 
unit  of  cooperating  effort  is  not  the  nation, 


Christianizing  the  Community  181 

not  the  farmers  as  a  class,  not  the  state,  not 
the  county,  but  the  local  community — a  little 
family  of  families. 

The  duty  of  the  individual  to  this  community, 
then,  is  that  when  making  his  own  plans  for 
his  own  business  he  should  keep  in  mind  the 
community  plan  and  the  community  interest, 
and  see  if  he  cannot  in  doing  his  business,  in 
making  his  living,  help  the  common  job  of 
making  a  living  for  the  community.  He  may 
have  to  subordinate  himself  to  some  extent, 
he  may  have  to  surrender  some  of  his  ideas, 
possibly  some  of  his  apparent  freedom.  But 
is  not  this  always  the  duty  of  a  good  citizen 
in  a  democratic  commonwealth  and  in  a  Chris¬ 
tian  civilization?  Surely  we  cannot  set  up  as 
our  ideal  each  man  for  himself  alone;  rather 
must  we  say,  “Each  for  all,  and  all  for  each.” 

Nevertheless,  one  has  a  right  to  ask,  what 
may  the  individual  expect  from  the  commu¬ 
nity?  Well,  he  has  a  right  to  have  from  the 
community  all  that  the  community  can  do  to 
give  him  and  his  family  a  fair  chance — good 
schools,  good  churches,  good  roads,  good 
health,  good  recreation,  good  morals,  good  pol¬ 
itics,  friendship,  kindness,  fair  dealing,  good 


182  A  Christian  Program 

books.  In  other  words  the  community  has  an 
obligation  to  every  individual  in  that  com¬ 
munity  to  furnish  him  the  materials  for  as  com¬ 
plete  a  life,  for  as  large  a  growth,  for  as  great 
happiness,  as  it  is  possible  to  provide. 

The  community  must  also  give  this  indi¬ 
vidual  a  chance  to  serve.  Usually  we  speak 
of  the  duty  of  service;  I  want  to  emphasize 
the  privilege  of  service.  Only  rarely  does  a 
man  grow  in  mental  and  moral  stature  by  sit¬ 
ting  in  his  house  and  letting  the  world  drift 
by.  He  must  be  out  among  men,  working  with 
them,  helping  his  fellows  to  the  best  there  is, 
developing  his  sympathies,  enlarging  his  view¬ 
point,  giving  practical  help.  The  full  measure 
of  manhood  comes  only  when  men  serve  their 
fellows.  Now  the  community  must  give  this 
opportunity.  Every  one  has  a  talent  that  can 
be  used  for  the  good  of  his  fellows.  The  com¬ 
munity  must  give  him  the  chance  to  use  it  and 
not  compel  him  to  hide  it  in  a  napkin  or  bury 
it  in  the  ground. 

I  want  to  call  attention  to  one  aspect  of 
community  building  often  overlooked.  We  are 
apt  to  think  of  community  problems  as  of  in¬ 
terest  only  to  the  community,  of  community 


Christianizing  the  Community  183 

life  as  small  and  narrow  just  because  it  is  lived 
out  here  in  a  little  neighborhood  of  farm  folk 
away  from  the  great  world.  As  a  matter  of 
fact  the  ideal  rural  community  is  a  little  world. 
And  from  this  center  men  may  go,  and  should 
go,  in  their  thinking  and  their  sympathies,  out 
to  other  communities,  out  to  the  farm  people 
of  the  whole  state,  and  of  the  whole  country, 
yes,  out  to  the  cities  and  to  the  common  inter¬ 
ests  of  our  great  America,  and  even  more,  out 
to  the  whole  world.  Brotherhood  is  not 
cribbed,  cabined,  and  confined  to  a  church 
group,  or  a  fraternal  group,  or  a  neighborhood 
group,  or  a  class  group,  or  a  national  group. 
Brotherhood  is  but  a  mockery  unless  it  takes 
in  every  nationality  the  wide  world  round. 

Can  I  say  more  to  emphasize  the  conviction 
that  all  of  this  Christian  program  for  farm 
interests  must  be  applied  in  the  local  units,  the 
little  farm  communities,  or  else  it  is  a  nearly 
useless  scrap  of  paper?  The  real  battle  for 
a  Christian  rural  civilization  will  be  settled  as 
each  of  the  tens  of  thousands  of  rural  com¬ 
munities  become  more  or  less  Christian  in  their 
daily  work  and  life.  Here,  at  home,  among 
his  neighbors,  must  each  man  have  his  chance, 


184  A  Christian  Program 

seek  the  common  welfare,  help  create  a  high 
group  morality,  work  for  the  good  of  human¬ 
kind,  develop  his  own  inner  life,  fulfill  his  ob¬ 
ligations,  receive  and  enjoy  his  rights,  become 
truly  Christian. 

It  may  be  remarked  in  passing  that  the  com¬ 
munity-building  idea  is  quite  as  applicable  to 
other  nations  as  to  our  own.  In  most  coun¬ 
tries,  in  fact,  true  rural  communities  already 
exist  in  the  form  of  farm  villages.  Missionary 
statesmen,  for  example,  now  recognize  that  if 
huge  populations  such  as  those  of  India  and 
China  are  to  be  “Christianized,”  the  process 
must  be  that  of  making  these  little  local  social 
units  Christian. 

In  this  series  of  lectures,  quotations  have 
been  freely  used.  This  has  been  done  that  you 
may  see  that  mine  is  not  a  voice  crying  in  the 
wilderness,  but  simply  one  of  many  voices  in¬ 
sisting  that  we  must  make  the  world  Christian. 
So  let  the  closing  words  be  some  challenging 
statements  concerning  the  duties  and  oppor¬ 
tunities  of  the  Church,  particularly  of  the 
country  church. 

Professor  Harlan  Feeman,  in  “The  King¬ 
dom  and  the  Farm/'  thus  defines  the  program 


Christianizing  the  Community  185 

of  the  rural  church :  “However,  the  main  work 
will  be  to  provide  leadership  through  leaders 
from  the  Church-membership  who  have  the 
social  consciousness  of  the  Kingdom  and  who 
will  project  the  Christian  motive  into  the  allied 
forces  of  the  Church  and  direct  them  toward 
the  realization  of  the  Christian  ideal.” 

Dr.  Brunner  issues  a  ringing  challenge  to 
the  country  church  in  “The  Country  Church 
in  the  New  World  Order” : 

The  aim  of  the  country  church  movement 
is  not  to  substitute  anything  for  the  Gospel. 
It  is  to  assist  in  expressing  the  best  religion 
of  the  ages  in  terms  of  the  best  spirit  of  the 
age.  It  believes  that  it  is  the  duty  of  the  rural 
pastor  ever  to  exalt  Jesus  as  the  Saviour  and 
as  the  Impulse,  the  Inspirer  of  all  true  service, 
of  all  kingdom  tasks  and  duties.  Thus  only 
can  spiritual  leadership  be  maintained.  Thus 
only  can  power  adequate  to  the  kingdom  task 
in  rural  America  be  generated  and  conserved. 
Apart  from  Jesus  we  can  do  nothing.  The 
field  of  service  for  the  country  pastor  and  his 
church  is  to  relate  and  apply  the  Gospel  to 
life,  so  to  define  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  and 
so  to  sympathize  with  and  serve  its  manifold 
needs  that  rural  ideals  will  be  maintained  and 
enlarged,  that  the  men  and  women  of  farm  and 
village  will  be  saved  and  will  go  forth  to  ex- 


186  A  Christian  Program 

press  their  religion  in  service  for  their  Church 
and  their  community,  for  their  part  of  the 
Kingdom.  It  is  a  large  field  and  a  challenging 
task.  None  is  more  exacting,  none  more  im¬ 
portant.  Success  depends,  not  upon  many  ac¬ 
tivities,  but  few;  not  on  various  goals,  but  ones 
— and  that  goal  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven. 

And  will  you  accept  the  challenge  of  Eduard 
Lindeman,  as  he  outlines  a  program  for  the 
local  church,  in  his  recent  book  “The  Com¬ 
munity”?  He  says: 

The  Church  as  an  institution,  in  order  to 
play  a  vital  role  in  the  Community  Movement, 
should  consider  the  following  program : 

(a)  It  should  emphasize  the  universal 
rather  than  the  fractional  elements  of  the 
Christian  religion. 

(b)  It  should  emphasize  the  scientific  rather 
than  the  mystical  elements  of  the  Christian 
religion. 

(c)  It  should  emphasize  the  ethical  rather 
than  the  creedal  factors  of  the  Christian  re¬ 
ligion. 

(d)  It  should  emphasize  the  social  rather 
than  the  individual  function  of  the  Christian 
religion. 

(e)  It  should  emphasize  its  special  function, 
namely,  the  spiritual  interpretation  of  the 
values  of  life. 


Christianizing  the  Community  187 

(f)  It  should  recognize  the  law  of  the  divi¬ 
sion  of  labor  in  social  affairs. 

(g)  In  delegating  tasks  to  other  agencies, 
organizations  and  institutions  it  should  not  re¬ 
linquish  its  interest  and  its  supervisory  control. 

(h)  It  should  train  leaders  for  all  worthy 
causes  leading  toward  social  progress. 

(i)  It  should  apply  its  principles  freely  to 
all  political,  social,  economic,  recreational,  and 
educational  problems  of  the  community. 

(j)  It  should  furnish  the  inspiration  of  the 
spiritual  dynamic  for  running  the  social  ma¬ 
chinery  of  the  community. 

And  finally,  let  me  leave  with  you  these 
superb  sentences  from  William  Adams  Brown : 

Democracy  has  a  right  to  expect  of  the 
Church  a  unifying  spiritual  influence,  spring¬ 
ing  from  a  common  faith,  and  issuing  in  com¬ 
mon  action.  We  are  standing  between  two 
worlds — the  world  of  selfish  competition  whose 
reliance  is  only  on  force,  and  a  world  of  mu¬ 
tual  helpfulness  and  cooperation  which  appeals 
to  reason  and  good  will.  The  issue  is  all  the 
more  serious  because  it  is  a  moral  issue.  .  .  . 
Two  theories  of  world  organization  are  con¬ 
tending  for  the  mastery:  the  soldier’s  theory 
and  the  teacher’s  theory.  .  .  .  Between  them 
there  can  be  no  compromise;  in  the  end  one 
or  the  other  must  conquer. 

Priceless  as  is  our  inheritance,  it  will  not 


188  A  Christian  Program 

become  truly  ours  until  we  make  it  ours  by  use. 
To  this  use  the  living-  Church  must  point  the 
way.  We  must  take  the  old  words  which  long 
association  has  clothed  with  a  remote  and  arti¬ 
ficial  sanctity  and  make  them  a  part  of  the  vital 
thought  of  to-day;  we  must  devise  the  new 
forms  of  social  organization  through  which  the 
ideals  they  express  may  be  translated  from 
hope  into  accomplishment ;  we  must  add  to  the 
lesser  loyalties  which  divide  the  citizens  of  the 
different  nations,  the  inclusive  citizenship  of 
the  Kingdom  of  God. 


THE  END 


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